


World War B - Part 4

by darrenzieger



Series: World War B [5]
Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrenzieger/pseuds/darrenzieger
Summary: Writing that Sidecar sequence nearly killed me.I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when the shit finally hits the fan and I have to doom some of these characters to die.
Relationships: Bob Belcher/Original Character(s), Gene Belcher/Courtney Wheeler, Gene Belcher/Jocelyn (Bob's Burgers), Gene Belcher/Original Character(s), Linda Belcher/Calvin Fischoeder, Louise Belcher/Original Character, Louise Belcher/Rudolph "Regular Sized Rudy" Steiblitz, Tina Belcher/Original Character(s)
Series: World War B [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1342978
Comments: 7
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

JOE

Things have not fallen apart, and the center is holding nicely, thank you.

But the longer the Safe Zone stays safe, the more nervous I get, and I’m not alone. The hottest topic of discussion around this little seaside town - and around the dinner table tonight - is “The Other Shoe,” as in “when will it drop?” and “just how flat _will_ it smoosh us when it does?”

Those questions are non-starters, really, but the matter of what form the Other Shoe will take - Nike, Reebok, or Xenomorph - is much more engaging. 

“The thing I don’t get,” says Rudy, “is the walking. I mean, feasting on the flesh of the dominant species on the planet, sure. But making a human body walk is extremely complicated. We’re bipedal. We tend to fall over. It definitely can’t be happening randomly.”

“It’s the brain bugs coordinating it,” says Louise.

“Sure,” says Rudy, “but the question is why. What do they get out of it? How does it benefit them to expend the energy and the cogitation playing at being zombies?”

“Maybe it’s a way for them to spread out," I say, "expand their territory so that when the body they’re in is used up, they’re in a new area. That’s the only--”

Jodi, who I now realize has been vibrating for several minutes, pounds her fists on the table, making her silverware jump. “Can we _please_ talk about something else?!”

That stops the conversation cold. Rudy and I are cowed, but Louise is not. “What are we _supposed_ to talk about - the new Thursday night lineup on NBC?”

Jodi sees her point, but she’s not giving in that easily. “I don’t know - we could discuss your dad’s burgers of the day for the past three weeks. Which rides at Wonder Wharf we still like and which ones we’ve outgrown. Our favorite optional Tesla features. We could gossip. We could sing a campfire song. We could have an orgy on the dinner table. Anything. Anything but the fucking _bugs_.”

“I like the orgy idea,” says Rudy. Louise lobs a dinner roll at him. Jodi snorts.

I’ll take a stab at it. “C-A-M-P-F-I-R-E-S-O-N-G song...” I sing in a reasonable facsimile of Spongebob Squarepants’ voice. Rudy picks up the dinner roll Louise tossed at him and beans me in the face with it.

Well, at least we’re all laughing now.

“I like the ‘Summon’ feature,” says Louise. “Why should you have to walk all the way to your car? It’s got wheels. It can come to you.”

“Speaking of wheels,” says Rudy, “I still love the Ferris wheel.”

“Ugh,” says Jodi. “I hate that thing. Actually, I hate all the rides. Always have.”

“Oh, come on,” says Rudy. “There’s nothing like the view from the top of the wheel. You can see for miles. And it’s a great place to make out.”

“Or more,” says Louise. Rudy blushes. 

“Oh my god,” says Jodi. “You’re disgusting, both of you.“

“If you knew what we actually did,” insists Rudy, “you’d call us ‘ingenious.’”

“Gross,” says Jodi. “I hope they wash those seats down between rutting couples.”

“No rutting was involved,” says Louise. “We’re not animals.”

“If you want to know what we _did_ do, I’ll take you to the Wharf for a demonstration,” says Rudy. Jodi looks around for a roll but doesn’t have one, so she crumples up a napkin and hurls it at him - but not before dipping it in gravy. It lands on his face, just beneath his left eye, and sticks there.

Rudy refuses to be phased. “Hmm,” he says, considering it. “I like it. I think this is a good look for me,” he says, and takes his plate and silverware to the kitchen sink without removing the napkin.

Louise gazes at him lovingly. “Fuckin’ retard,” she says. “God, Jodi, what do you see in him?”

I really like these kids. I’ve gotten used to being the “one of these things” that “is not like the others” at our gatherings. I’m more than twice their age; but then, when I taught middle school in my 30s, I spent most of my time around people less than half my age, and most of them were assholes. Even the good ones. There’s no demographic more obnoxious, more insufferable, than 12 to 14-year-old kids. I chose to teach at an inner-city junior high school for the same reason some guys join the military or go skydiving. To prove to myself that I could handle it. That I was a Man. 

A stupid, masochistic man.

I realize I’ve been staring at Louise and Jodi, happily, for more than a moment when Louise says “what?”

“Nothing. I just like you guys a lot. It’s worth feeling like an ancient relic to hang out with you.”

“You’re not ancient,” says Louise.

“Definitely not,” says Jodi, winking at me.

“You _are_ old, though,” adds Louise.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “Real old.”

I’ve got two dinner rolls in my arsenal and I’m a good shot, so they each get a bready boop on the nose.

“OK,” says Louise, devouring the roll mostly as a means of arms reduction. “That was actually pretty impressive.”

“Yeah,” says Rudy, from the couch. He’s still wearing the napkin. “Say - when are you getting that robotic hand from Anais and Miriam?”

“Tomorrow. I can’t wait. They say it will follow voice commands and even adjust itself predictively based on the motions of my arm.”

“But it won’t react to your nerve signals or thoughts?” says Jodi, a little disappointed.

“No. They don’t have the neurological knowledge to hook up the hand that way, and telepathy is outside their lane.” Apparently, the kid thinks we’re living in a science fiction movie.

Actually, come to think of it, that’s completely understandable.  
  


“That is going to be so fucking cool," says Louise. "Is it going to have skin, or are they going to leave it uncovered so it looks like the Terminator?” 

Oy. “They say it’s going to have a sort of smooth, flexible metal covering made from the alloy Anais uses to print their robots. She offered to make it skin-toned, but I figured that wasn’t going to fool anyone, so it’s going to be glossy white, like photo paper.”

Louise has a concern. “Metal, huh? How’s that going to feel, um... you know... against my skin?”

A moment ago she was rooting for a Terminator hand. “Probably a little weird. But I can wear a glove if you’d rather feel something soft.”

“Nah,” she says. “Weird is good.”

I’ve long since unceremoniously ditched the mannequin hand, which honestly felt a tad preternatural. All in all, the bandaged stump - which I’ve decorated with brightly covered tape - is less off-putting.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “I’ve always wanted to do it with an android.”

She’s not joking. She once told me her biggest crush ever was on Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Jodi’s weirdly adorable. Or adorably weird. She doesn’t talk about it, but Louise tells me she had a psychotic germ phobia as a kid, which she‘s mostly gotten over since surviving the plague. What does not kill me...

She’s smart as hell, maybe smarter than me - not something I admit easily - and for a tiny slip of a thing, she’s a big, commanding presence. She’s the undisputed head of her large household, and in fact the architect of their group marriage. Which is actually very sweet. She fell in love with five people at once and acted on it.

She seems pretty fond of me as well. In fact, I think she’s discovered that she has a thing for Jewish guys. She’s in tune with my neuroses, which are pretty typical of my cohort.

Sidebar: despite what Louise will tell you, I am _not_ a mashup of Woody Allen and Gabe Kaplan. If any of you have been imagining Louise getting down with Mr. Kotter, God help you, and get therapy.

Believe it or not, I have more in common with those nice Jewish guys from Brooklyn, The Beastie Boys. In fact, after I’d had enough of teaching in the Hood, I took a job at Success Academy Cobble Hill, a charter school where I happened to be Mike D(iamond)’s daughter’s teacher for a few years.

None of which makes me particularly “street,” but then neither were Mike D, MCA or Ad-Rock, in reality.

The point, from which I’ve digressed, is that Louise simply has no reasonable point of reference for understanding a Jew from New York. She’s married to a Jewish guy, but culturally, he’s pretty generic. And for a town within shouting distance of Manhattan, there was clearly a minimal Jewish presence here before the plague. The closest Synagogue is in Bog Harbor.

There _is_ a group of observant Jews in the community now, but it’s tiny - just enough guys for a Minyan, and about the same number of women. One of the men, the eldest, was a small child during the Holocaust, and managed to make it out of Treblinka without being gassed. And now he’s made it through the near-extinction of the human race. A double-Survivor.

Saddest bastard I’ve ever met.

I don’t know how these people hold on to their faith, with all that’s happened - though I guess this wouldn’t be the first time the God of the Old Testament exterminated almost all of humanity.

We clear the table and head downstairs to Chez Gene’s ground floor, which is divided into three living areas to accommodate the social needs of - at the moment - three couples and a thruple, and their visitors. We settle into the section in the rear, which is the most private, and take our seats on a large and absurdly padded couch, Louise draped across Rudy’s lap, Jodi across mine.

We hadn’t precisely planned to couple up in this specific configuration - Jodi is still Rudy’s side-chick and I’m still Louise’s side-guy; but Rudy and Louise have been inseparable lately, joined at the hip (usually one on top of the other) since their reconciliation, so I’ve mostly been hooking up with Jodi.

All of which is great fun, but I have to admit, as much as I adore Louise and Jodi, and having flings with cute young things in general, I’m kind of lonely just having little flings occasionally - even with these wonderful youngsters. 

I really need a primary, ideally someone more age-appropriate. Jodi’s got three husbands and, once in a while Rudy, and Louise is pretty much 100 percent Rudy’s at the moment. So, while I do absolutely appreciate what I’ve got, I have it only occasionally and, in the long run, I need more.

All three of my dinner companions know this, and they keep trying to hook me up with other women. But the stump is a real turnoff. The robot hand will be weird, but at least I won’t look malformed anymore.

Jodi’s in a cuddly mood, which is always delightful. She’s skinny and all angles, but somehow when she’s affectionate, those angles round themselves off, and we just sink into each other. She’s already purring and nuzzling me while I scritch her head, and Louise is kissing Rudy’s neck. I don’t think we’ll be hanging out down here very long.

I catch Rudy’s eye and shrug. In a desultory attempt to start a conversation, he says “so, how ‘bout them Mets?”

“Beats me. I stopped following sports pretty much the moment I realized that girls were much more interesting.”

“I'm pretty sure you haven’t missed anything the past five years,” says Jodi.

Well, that's depressing. But I know a good way to lift my mood. I kiss Jodi’s forehead, then work my way down to nibble on her ear - which elicits an “eep!”

“Hey,” Louise asks Rudy, indignant, “how come you never nibble on my ear?”

Rudy is just a bit flustered. “I... I didn’t think you liked it. I know you like it when I put my tongue in there, too much information.” The last statement is directed at me and Jodi.”

“Ew,” says Jodi. “Ear wax.”

“When you’re in love,” says Rudy, “even your lover’s ear wax tastes good.”

“Bleah. Do you eat her snot, too-oooo?”

I’ve just given Jodi a lesson in the joys of having a loving tongue in one’s ear.

“Dammit,” she says. “Now I’m grossed out and turned on at the same time! Fuck it. Take me to bed, Joe. I’ve got to figure some things out.”

  
  


MEL

So Jodi just ran into the back bedroom, dragging Joe Z (who was hardly kicking and screaming about it). She’s an odd little thing. Sexy, too. A strong woman. Joe’s lucky - he’s got Jodi _and_ Louise doting on him - at least sporadically.

My Joe - my bandmate - is sitting on the couch, fiddling aimlessly on a Martin D-45 Excalibur Acoustic worth more than his Tesla (in pre-Plague dollars). He hasn’t been able to focus very well lately, so I’ve brought out my Ibanez acoustic/electric bass - the one with the acoustic guitar-style body (an altogether less rarefied instrument, but I like it), to see if I can draw him out. 

I go right into the bass introduction to the coda of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” Joe picks up on it immediately and after I repeat the figure four times, he goes into a pretty accurate rendition of Lindsay Buckingham’s furious guitar solo. Somehow I keep forgetting he was a famous musician, and a damned good one, then he impresses me with his virtuosity and I remember. After eight bars, we sing “Cha-a-ain, keep us together,” which he follows with “Running in the shadows!” Repeat and fade. Well, not fade, like the record - hard to do live. After a few times around, with a nod, we agree to end on a final “...keep us together!”

From various spots throughout the house (including the rear bedroom), we hear applause. It feels good. We haven’t played and sung together in months. Joe’s pretty much lost interest since Tess left him. And the band. And town.

The guy she moved in with lives in Egg Harbor, well within the Safe Zone, or I’d be worried sick. Or she’d be back, albeit with the new guy in tow. She’s no fool.

But Joe is inconsolable. I should know - I’ve been consoling his brains out every day for a month trying to get him out of his funk. It hasn’t worked, the ungrateful bastard.

(OK, he’s actually very grateful. A grateful sad sack.)

“We should cover that entire fucking album,” says Joe. “Or would that be wallowing? And if so, is there anything wrong with that?”

“Oh, come on, write your own goddamn album about personal intrigues and betrayal. You do remember you’re a songwriter, right? Like, a fucking Grammy-winning songwriter.”

“I hear ya,” he says. “It just feels weird. I never wrote about deep, personal shit. More about ideas, and stories about fictional characters.”

“So stretch a little,” I say. “You have an opportunity to record the first pop album of the post-apocalypse. Sell _one_ copy and you’ll be at the top of the charts. Ten copies, and it'll go Platinum. Also, you’ll be a legend. Like long-term, historically legendary.”

“I dunno. It seems like the first album of the new age should be about grander themes, doesn’t it.”

_Oh, you are so full of shit, Joseph Brewster._ “Just... fuck, just work with me here, ok? And I mean that in both the figurative _and_ literal sense. Let’s collaborate. Write about whatever, but just write. You’ve waited too long to start creating again, anyway.”

“That’s sweet, Mel, but I think I’m just too depressed to write.”

I think I need to stand up and say that previous thing out loud: “You are so full of shit, Joe. If depression kept people from writing, about two-thirds of the art ever created wouldn’t exist. So use it. Don’t want to write about Tess? Fine. Write about the end of the fucking world. Write about fear and despair and loneliness and alien bugs and robots and robot bugs, and everything else in your life!”

I’m standing over him now. Well, at my height, with him sitting up on the sofa, we’re more or less eye to eye.

“You’re the most talented guy I’ve ever met, and you’re wasting the chance to be the voice of a whole new civilization! Your girlfriend left you and you can't function? Fuck you - you’re alive when almost eight billion people died in one year! Suck it up!”

“Mel...”

“And what am I, chopped liver? You know, I broke up my hot little triad to tend to you, you asshole. And I am an amazing person, and I am cute as hell, and I am dynamite in the sack! And I’m half you age. You should be the happiest guy in town. You should be writing songs about _me_.”

"Mel,” he says, “You are all those things and I adore you and I was with Tess for 25 years and I’m not going to get over her just because I’m banging the hottest chick in town.”

I glare at him.

“Or because I have the love of a wonderful, brilliant young woman,” he adds. “Tess was my _life partner_. I can’t just let that go overnight.”

“It’s been two months, Joe. I’m not saying you should be completely over her by now, or even ever, but to answer your earlier question: yes, it’s wrong to wallow. 

“You’re here in this town, the safest place on Earth, and no one’s asking anything of you. You get free food, free housing. You don’t need a daytime gig. So do your _fucking_ job and create music. With me. And Gene, and Mac. Or just with me, or with anyone, or by your stupid self.”

At this point, Joe is clearly angry, but his head is bowed. He knows I’m right.

“I’ve tried, you know. Tried writing some lyrics. Everything that comes out is drivel.”

“So we’ll work on music first.”

He looks up. His face is twisted with anger, but his angry expression is twisted by a smile. “Bass parts first, OK? Maybe something you come up with will inspire me.” he kisses me and takes my hands. “You already inspire me,” he says. 

Men.

  
  


JOCELYN

So, bummer, Mel is out of the relationship, at least for now. She’s got something going with Joe - rock-star Joe, not robot-hand Joe. That’s cool. He’s a real gnarly old dude. Good for her.

I’m afraid it’s bad timing, though, ‘cause I’m going into a hetero phase, and what’s Jess gonna do? I mean, like, plenty of fish, sure, but I don’t think there’s any other lesbians that she’s really close to right now. And I don’t want her left out in the cold like Gene was. I felt real bad about that.

Gene, of course, is totally on my agenda, but I’m also hoping I can get Danny to look twice at me. That’s really what I need to get back into men after a year. Six feet four of beautiful muscle. And he’s really sweet, too. Millie and I are gonna have to have a conversation. 

I still can’t get over how cool it is to be able to walk around outside and do stuff. I go to the Wharf every day and look out at the ocean. Sometimes I ride the rides, but mostly I just watch the waves and practice thinking.

It’s frustrating, though. I know I’m smart, but I got a really late start learning how to think about things that weren’t right in front of my face. It’s like I didn’t master object permanence until I was 18. 

I still see her in my mind every day, when I look at the ocean - Tammy, on her knees, wailing, screaming that it wasn’t fair, that she should have been immune from the Plague becuase she was fucking _Tammy_. But also that she’d wasted her life, like it flashed before her eyes and she realized, at the last moment, how empty it was. How empty _she_ was. 

I couldn’t speak. What could I say? What could someone even a hundred times smarter than me think of to say? It was over, and she knew it, and she wasn’t going out with any dignity. I don’t think less of her for it. It was horrible. I still can't imagine being her in that moment. She was going to die and it was going to be ugly. No famous last words - she just didn’t have it in her.

I watched her scream and pound the floor for like two minutes, unable to act, before she finally looked up, face wet and smeared with mascara - who the hell wears mascara in the middle of the apocalypse? Who was she trying to impress?) She stared straight into the barrel of my gun, and growled “well what are you waiting for, idiot? Do it! Do it do it do it do it!!” She closed her eyes tight and kept up her chant, which had grown into a scream, probably hoping if she kept it up, loud enough, she wouldn’t notice dying.

“Do it do it do it!! Do it do--”

I did it.

You know the rest. I froze there, for hours. I’d killed my best friend. For the right reason - to save her from a slower, more horrible death. But that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. I wasn’t angry at myself. I wasn’t angry at all. Or even sad. I was just... lost. Lost in the insanity of it all. Stuck in an endless reality check moment I couldn’t find my way out of.

I was in shock - but not just any shock. The specific shock you get when you’ve just killed your best friend in the middle of a zombie apocalypse but you don’t have to run to save your own skin. There was nowhere I needed to be. There was nowhere there was any point in being. So I just... stopped. Everything. I’m surprised I remembered to breathe. 

Up to that point, I was barely smart enough to remember to breathe under the best of circumstances.

Tammy’s the only person I had to kill during the Plague. Poor Gene, he has 53 notebooks on his shelf, each one with a name on the cover, a birthdate if he knew it, and a date of death. One for every person he put down. Inside, he wrote down everything he knew about them. Some are nearly empty, memorials to complete strangers.

Too many of them contain page after page of detailed memories. Lenny DeStefano, Alex Papasian, Henry Haber, Lurleeen “Mudflap” Powell, Dave “Critter” Powell, Sidecar Powell...

That last one was the worst. Apparently, Critter and Mudflap had decided to first take six-year-old Sidecar out in his sleep, but couldn’t bring themselves to do it. So they called Gene, saying they were going to go over to the mass grave site and each shoot the other on the count of three - something about it being more honorable than direct suicide - and that they were sorry, so, so, so sorry, but he was going to have to put Sidecar down.

So they went to Wagstaff, pointed their guns at each other, said their I love yous, and shot.

But they both missed.

So first Gene went down to the mass grave and put a bullet in each of their heads. He said they died with dignity - before he shot them, they each took a turn singing some sort of biker death anthem/drinking song, or something like that. Gene sang it for me, tears in his eyes. It had a kind of fearless, Viking/Klingon, “it is a good day to die” feel, but that’s all I remember. I was sobbing too hard, partly for them, but mostly for Sidecar.

But Sidecar, that was the worst. Probably the worst moment of Gene's life. The boy was awake when Gene got to their place, and he must have seen his eyes in the mirror. And of course he noticed that his parents weren’t there.

He was sitting on the living room sofa, holding one of the many human skull-shaped candles that decorated the room, like a fucking baby Hamlet.

When he saw Gene, he said “Momma and Daddy are dead, ain’t they.”

Gene could barely speak. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“And I gotta die now, right?”

Gene says he almost fainted, trying to keep himself together. And there was nothing for it, he ran over to the couch, held Sidecar in his arms, and sobbed and sobbed.

But Sidecar was calm. “It’s OK, Uncle Gene. I’m gonna be with Momma and Daddy soon.”

Gene could barely whisper “yes.”

“How you gonna do it? A gun?”

Gene couldn’t believe Sidecar was so sanguine about his own imminent demise.

I can believe it, though. At that age, you don’t really _get_ death. You don’t experience existential dread. It's not in your repertoire. He just knew that Momma and Daddy weren’t in this world anymore, and when he died, he would get to be with them in Heaven.

Gene steadied himself. “I’d rather not,” he said. “Can you... can you swallow pills.”

“Yeah,” Sidecar said, proudly. “I take like three different pills for my hyperactivity and my bipolar. I can swallow a bunch at a time.” 

Gene said he thought he would go insane, but he had to keep it together for Sidecar. He knew he could go home and cry and scream and pound his head on the wall later.

“Well, I’ve got these pills. If you take ten, you drift off to sleep peacefully and you wake up in Heaven.” 

Hands shaking, Gene pulled a vial of opiates from his pocket. It would ten pills would knock him out quickly, and stop his heart about five minutes later.

They were big pills, but Sidecar wasn’t daunted. “I’ll take four and four and two!” He was as enthusiastic as if he was about to play with Legos. 

He could tell Gene was still upset when he came back with water for the boy to wash the pills down with.

“Don’t be sad, Uncle Gene. I’m gonna see Momma and Daddy soon. And someday I’ll see you again. Do you want me to watch over you from Heaven?”

“Yeah,” said Gene. “You’ll be a great guardian angel. How about you don’t watch over just me - watch over the whole town.”

“I will. OK, pill time,” said the boy, almost merrily, maybe just a touch subdued. He was going on an adventure, but it _was_ a scary one.

Sidecar did as he promised, and downed the pills in three swallows. Then Gene held him and sang him lullabies until he was asleep, and kept singing until his little heart stopped. 

Then he called Courtney, who was with the cleanup squad, and told her there was a cleanup in aisle five, as the squad was in the habit of saying. Gallows humor. When he told her who it was, Court kind of lost it. She had to hang up so she could scream for a minute, but called back and insisted on being the one to take Sidecar to the mass grave.

When she got to the apartment, Gene wouldn’t let go of the body, so they drove to Wagstaff with Gene in the passenger seat, holding the dead child with his head on his shoulder, as if he was only sleeping.

Neither Courtney or Gene has ever spoken about burying Sidecar. But, really, what is there to say.

I don’t know how Gene handles it. It doesn’t matter that it was the right thing to do in every case. How do you live with the memory of killing with someone? Even just one person -especially a child?

That’s an actual question, not - what’s the word? - rhetorical.

Someone, please tell me. 

OK, time to leave the Wharf and quit thinking for a while.

  
  


MILLIE

Boy, they all want a piece of Danny, don’t they? One specific piece. Well, nah, they want the whole gorgeous enchilada, and who can blame them?

“So, like, um, I was wondering, if, like.. it’s okay if not, rully... but if, like you’d be totally mad if me and Danny... I mean, I haven’t, like, asked him or anything, but if I, like, if I did, would you be mad, and if he, like said yes, would you be mad at him, and...” Wow. Jocelyn really regresses when she’s nervous. 

I guess her lesbian phase is over.

And for the record, I haven’t been “totally mad” in years.

“Jocelyn...”

“It’s, like, not a big deal, rully, but it would be... oh? You were, like, saying?”

“Joss, it’s cool. If Danny’s into you, it’s fine. Just leave some for me, ‘kay. When Danny was with Courtney, they were pretty much exclusive, which was a bummer, even though Gene was loads of fun once we got around to it.”

“Ooo, thanks. Thank you. Cool. Totally...” She pauses and clears her throat, suddenly aware that she’s been babbling in her old Idiot-ese dialect. “Sorry. That’s great. Rully.” She sighs. “Dammit. ‘Really.’” 

I feel so bad for her. She’s so smart, but she’s got the instincts and reflexes of a profoundly stupid person, and it drives her crazy. 

“Um, the thing is, could you, like...” she cringes at her verbal tic “could you ask him if he’s interested. It would be so embarrassing if he said no, and it would probably make him uncomfortable to have to say it to my face...”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. I remember how badly it hurt him to reject Gene. He loves the guy, but he’s just not into him that way. Sometimes I think I was Gene’s consolation prize. But then, anyone would be, if option one was the Statue of David. _The Statue of Danny_. I like it.

You know, when I first got here, I couldn’t believe the way everyone was sleeping with everyone else. It’s a really weird thing, isn't it? That’s just not how relationships work. And I sure as hell couldn’t imagine sharing Danny with anyone, or why anyone would let their bestie be a free agent like that. And then there was Tina - Tina freaking Belcher - in a six-person group marriage. Even after all that’s happened, that seemed too weird to be true.

But when Louise happily let Rudy sleep with Jodi, I thought: it can’t be that much of a stretch. I mean, if anyone’s gonna have a jealous streak and back it up with bad anger management, it’s Louise, especially when it comes to Rude. 

Sure, she freaked out over Rudy and Tina, but that’s different. 

I wonder if she’d mind if I took a stab at Rudy myself. He’s so not my type, but he’s such a sweetie. And so funny. And considering what I hear every day and night even through their insulated bedroom walls, he must be doing something right.

And it would take my mind off Danny when he was with Jocelyn. 

Joss is on her way up the stairs when she sees Danny, on his way down.

“Oh, hi!” she squeaks. “How, like, how are you? I--”

“I’d love to,” says Danny, and gives her a big hug. I love his hugs.

I laugh my ass off. “Danny, how much of that did you hear?”

“Most of it. I’ve been sitting at the top of the stairs.”

“You asshole,” I say, still laughing. “How long were you going to let her suffer?”

"I just wanted to hear your answer. If it was ‘no,’ I was going to go take a walk, so I didn’t run into her. I figured it would be really uncomfortable.”

“Yeah,” says Joss. “Like I’m not totally mortified now.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you,” he says, as they leave, presumably heading for Joss’s bedroom.

Fuck, I was all in the mood, too. I’m gonna call Gene. What’s he gonna do, say no? 

  
  


TINA

Okay, guys. Conference call.

  
  


OMNES (look it up)

What?/Yeah?/What’s up?

  
  


JOE

Wait, how does this even work?

  
  


MEL

Good question.

  
  


TINA

Questions are not your friend here. Trust me.

  
  


JOE/MEL

Oy. 

  
  


JOE (to MEL)

‘Oy’? You?

  
  


MEL

One of my Moms was Jewish. Distant relative of the Rothschilds, actually.

  
  


JOE

The Rothschilds. Fuck me.

  
  


MEL

It’s an option.

  
  


JOE

[does a spit take, and he’s not even drinking anything at the moment]

  
  


TINA

Yeah, well, that’s what I’m here to discuss.

  
  


MEL

You called this... meeting... to discuss me fucking Joe? Which is going to be confusing because I’m already fucking another one.

  
  


TINA

Shush. Look, guys, far be it from me to object to sex in the narrative, but come on. It’s all anyone can talk about lately, except Jocelyn. Joss, you never told me about that stuff with Tammy, and Gene never told me about Sidecar. Oh my God, I’ve been crying into my pillow for the last ten minutes.

  
  


COURTNEY

Well, that’s the thing, Tina. If it wasn’t for sex, all I would think about every day when I wasn’t working would be the Plague. And now fucking alien bugs and zombies. There’s no new TV or music, and videos and records from the old days are just depressing. Things like puzzles and crosswords are too quiet; my mind wanders, and never anywhere good. 

Until it’s time to fight for our lives - and with any luck, that time won’t come - what else are we supposed to do to drown out the voices of the dead. I swear, it’s so bad, when I’m not having sex, I just jerk off. All fucking day. Do you know how sore I am?

  
  


TINA

Jesus, Court. TMI. Look, there’s a lot going on, especially since the lockdown was lifted. For example, you’re still working on maintaining and monitoring the water supply.

  
  


COURTNEY

Important but boring.

  
  


TINA

And Gene, Louise, and me, all three of us, plus Mom and Andrea, are working at the restaurant again. Lots of interesting stuff going on there. Unusual people, entertaining banter. 

  
  


RUDY

Hey, wait a minute, Tina - wasn’t your last entry a long sex scene with Victor.

  
  


TINA

Guilty as charged, but that was artistically valid, as you’ve been heard to say.

  
  


RUDY

[sigh] Touche. Still, c’mon. Give us a break. Sex is fun, and it’s about all there is to do around here most of the time.

  
  


TINA

Well, maybe you should be trying to find more productive things to do.

  
  


JOE

If there’s anything more “productive” than giving a girl an orgasm, I’ve never found it. And I’ve been at this _life_ shit twice as long as you have.

  
  


TINA

Ugh. Look, how about I ask you all some questions and see if I can squeeze some worthwhile information out of you.

  
  


LOUISE

Do we have any choice?

  
  


TINA

No. Posterity, right?

  
  


LOUISE

Fine. But you owe me.

  
  


TINA

No, I don’t. OK, Louise, let’s do you first and get it out of the way, since you’re clearly not interested.

  
  


LOUISE

But I am interest- _ing_ , amirite?

  
  


TINA

Let’s find out. So, when you’re not, as established, sleeping with your husband and/or Joe, what do you do with your time.

  
  


LOUISE

You know what I do. Jesus. You do the same thing. You just said.

  
  


TINA

Posterity, Louise.

  
  


LOUISE

Uuuuugh. Fine. I work at Bob’s Burgers, our family’s eating establishment. We cook up the best burgers in town - which we did even back in the day, before we were the only burger joint on the east coast. I wait tables, work the register, and occasionally cook, like when Dad needs to go to his “4:30 appointment.”

  
  


TINA

And how long have you been working there?

  
  


LOUISE

Tina...

  
  


TINA

Pos--

  
  


LOUISE

\--terity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I started when I was 7, because you’re never too young for child labor. And before you bug me for more details, yes, I like my job, I always have. I like sassing the customers. And you and Gene. And Mom and Dad. I am Grand Master Sass. Ha! I just made that up.

Other than that, when I’m not in the restaurant or flagrante delicto, I do my fair share of chores around the house, and smoke more than my fair share of Calvin Fischoeder’s primo weed.

  
  


TINA

Really. Do mom and dad know you partake?

  
  


LOUISE

I think they figured it out the first time I got high with them.

  
  


TINA

Whoa. How could you not tell me about this before?

  
  


LOUISE

I don’t know. I guess I thought you wouldn’t approve. You’re not into pot.

  
  


TINA

Just because I don't' like it doesn’t mean I disapprove of other people doing it. I just happen to react badly to it. It doesn’t get me high, just paranoid. 

  
  


LOUISE

That’s a shame. You should try ‘shrooms instead. It’s amazing having sex when you're high...

  
  


TINA

Moving along. Rudy, what do you do? Do you have a day job?

  
  


RUDY

I work at the fishery. It’s pretty cool. Hard work, but that’s a good thing, really. The only problem is, I tend to get attached to the fish, then we have to kill them. I know it’s dumb. They’re fish. They don't have thoughts, they don’t know who you are. But I can’t help it.

Anyway, I work there about 20 hours a week. I spend most of the rest of the time with Louise, but sometimes I like to go to the Wharf, watch the ocean - that's a pretty popular pastime - maybe ride the rides for old time’s sake.

Actually, doing Wonder Wharf stuff for old time’s sake is generally a bad idea. So I just look out at the ocean. If I’m going to think about all the kids I used to go to the Wharf with who’re dead now, doing it on the Teacup ride is just...grotesque.

Which is why I spend most of my time in bed with Louise--

  
  


TINA

Rudy...

  
  


RUDY

Tina, it’s how we find comfort while the world is ending all around us. Not just the fucking - I mean holding each other close against the horror happening outside the Safe Zone, and the trauma of losing almost everything and everyone we knew. It’s not my place to speak for him, but Joe still wakes up screaming every night, feeling his hand being gnawed off.

  
  


JOE

Can confirm.

  
  


RUDY

We’re all wounded, Tina, and we’re licking our wounds the best way we know how. Jesus, Tina, we had this exact same conversation the night you and I almost destroyed my marriage--

  
  


TINA

Rudy! That’s enough.

  
  


RUDY

Sure we used it as an excuse to fuck when we shouldn’t have, but the talk was sincere. We played this depressing game, remember? Seeing how many names we could rattle off of friends and classmates who died. We wound up crying our eyes out. And you know what, the sex helped a lot--

  
  


TINA

Rudy, stop it. We were supposed to put this all behind us.

  
  


LOUISE

Water under the bridge, sis.

  
  


TINA

[sigh] Fine. But that’s enough, OK. Please?

  
  


RUDY

Yeah. Sure. No problem. Anyway, that’s _my_ life. Who’s next?

  
  


TINA

Gene?

  
  


GENE

Present, but not accounted for.

  
  


TINA

So, what are you up to these days when you’re not having sex? 

  
  


GENE

Well, for a while there I was perfecting my masturbation skills, but that was kind of gilding the lily.

  
  


TINA

Gene...

  
  


GENE

Fine. I still work with Teddy, maintaining the electricity infrastructure, though a lot of the grunt work was done by the mantis-bots before they got put on sentry duty. As you know, during that time we built a full-scale solar array on the old Seymour’s Bay High football field, so we can keep up with all our new residents without having to install panels on every individual unit. 

Now, with more and more people flooding into town and into Bog Harbor to be at the center of the Safe Zone, we’re probably going to have to build another one.

  
  


TINA

Sounds it was like a lot of work. 

  
  


GENE

It was. We had to go back to the warehouse in Edison to get all the solar panels - luckily, this was after the smell of death from New York stopped and before the gas went bad. Crap, how are we going to get more solar panels here without trucks?

  
  


TINA

You can use those throwback VW vans they came out with before the Plague. They’re electric. 

  
  


GENE

Oh, right. Duh. Still, that means a lot more trips, or a huge convoy of vans. How many do you think the dealership in Bog Harbor has?

  
  


TINA

I have no idea. Why would I? I just know I’ve seen about five of them tooling around town.

  
  


GENE

Cool. OK, so anyway, I’m still on Teddy’s infrastructure team, and of course, Courtney and I still do Post-Apocalypse Now, though as you know we cut back to once a month a couple years ago because not enough was happening. We might want to go weekly again now - lot’s of new citizens to interview and stuff.

  
  


COURTNEY

Count me in.

  
  


TINA

Courtney. How’s the water system holding up?

  
  


COURTNEY

No problems. Even with the population doubling, we can more than handle it. We set it up to serve up to about ten-thousand people. And the water remains free of contaminants. What my team does mainly is test the water, weekly, in different areas - divided up by which ones are fed by which pipes. We also check all the wells periodically. It’s a lot of work, even more than it sounds like, but it’s important. 

  
  


TINA

That’s awesome. The tap water here tastes great, so thanks. Anything else going on? Hobbies, interests.

  
  


COURTNEY

Well, my main hobby is Gene, but you don’t want to hear about that. Oh! Gene and I have both taken up knitting and other kinds of needlecraft -- clothes wear out. I mean, there’s enough clothing to cover every human being on the planet probably a thousand times over in malls and stores and homes all over the world, but they’re just hanging there unprotected from changes in temperature and humidity, or in places open to the elements. Eventually, we’re going to have to learn how to manufacture fabric and stuff like that again. It’ll be a while, but we need to be prepared.

  
  


GENE

Also, it’s weirdly fun. 

  
  


TINA

Have you knitted anything interesting?

  
  


COURTNEY

Well, not really. We’re each working on a sweater, but somehow we can only concentrate on knitting for about half an hour at a time before we have to go back to our other hobby. But you--

  
  


TINA

\--don’t want to hear about it. Right.

  
  


TINA

Mel, how about you?

  
  


MEL

Well, I’ve mostly been working on getting Joe -- _my_ Joe -- back into working order since Tess left him. But I’ve mostly been doing that by means of that thing you don’t want to hear about. 

  
  


TINA

This is ridiculous.

  
  


MEL

No, you’re ridiculous. I mean, my God, Tina, you don’t even have a day job, and you’ve got three husbands and a fuckbuddy. What else do _you_ do all day?

  
  


TINA

Alright, class dismissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing that Sidecar sequence nearly killed me. 
> 
> I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when the shit finally hits the fan and I have to doom some of these characters to die.


	2. Signals

SUSMITA

Well, something finally happened.

The walkers have stopped moving. Entirely. They’re standing in place, still as statues, every worker bug motionless other than occasional slight adjustments to keep the walkers balanced and standing upright.

One disturbing change: every walker is now sporting a gruesome new hat. The brain bugs have burst through the top of their walker’s skulls so that their heads are sticking out, staring straight up at the sky. Body modification, worst case scenario.

They’re also buzzing continuously like otherworldly cicadas. Interestingly, the sound seems to emanate from their front pincers, which can be seen vibrating wildly if you have the sheer balls to get close enough. Or access to Howard’s spy satellite.

It’s happening all over the world. Every outpost Howard is in contact with reports the same phenomenon. And we know for a fact that every walker in North America is motionless. Using his satellites and some complex AI routines created by Miriam, Howard has been tracking every single walker on the continent.

So, sure, it’s kind of a relief that they’re no longer on the move. But it’s also freaking _everyone_ out, bad - because what the _fuck_ is happening? What are they doing? What is the purpose?

What - or who - are they waiting for? Or calling to?

Probably the Other Shoe.

Whatever’s going on, this had better be _it_. I need this to be the final iteration of the apocalypse. Crawlers, then Walkers, now this.

Whatever’s next _has_ to be the last thing. Even if it kills us all. I just want this nightmare to be over. I’m sick of living my entire life with my skin crawling and my brain trying to escape out my ear. I want us to survive, but not in a constant state of terror. I’m sick of experiencing the fight-or-flight response continuously when neither is possible.

I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’.

My spouses are no help. _I’m_ freaked out, but _they’re_ all having complete meltdowns. Miriam and Anais, who were getting edgier and edgier for months even before this new, nerve-wracking phenomenon - partly because they were out of robot-building materials, and other professional frustrations, and partly because their relationship was deteriorating for more ordinary reasons - are barely speaking to one another, and I’ve been stuck in the middle, mediating, which usually goes like this: Miriam: tell Anais I said _x_ . Anais: tell Miriam to go _y_ herself.

The only positive thing brought about by the change in the walkers’ behavior is that the two of them have dropped their overt hostilities so they can focus all their energy on being terrified, albeit separate corners.

Tina and Mac spend most of their time locked in their room. I don’t know what they’re up to, but they don’t seem to be fucking their blues way. They’re probably just lying in bed, clinging to each other for dear life. Which is sweet, but must get tedious after a while. Plus your arm falls asleep.

That leaves the Twins and Jodi. I spend most of my time with them in the upstairs bedroom, which would normally be great fun, but no one’s in the mood. For anything. I’m in a continual state of talking them down. On the bright side, I’m usually doing so from within a beautiful bear hug from Grant or Dean.

But the truth is, they’re hugging me and Jodi to them like we’re _their_ teddy bears. For their own comfort. I don’t resent it - they’re sweet, sensitive guys and they’re terrified. And they do love us.

But like me,Jodi isn’t getting any comfort from our cuddle bears. She’s not edging toward catatonia like she used to when deeply frightened; quite the contrary: she’s talking my ear off, chattering about everything and nothing - what psychologists call pressured speech. I can’t get a word in edgewise. Luckily, I don’t really care to, anyway. I hold her hands, stroke her cheek, and try to filter out her talking and let my mind wander, though it rarely goes anywhere pleasant.

Somehow, this is worse than when the walkers first appeared, or even when those seven walkers came up out of the mass grave at Wagstaff. Walkers were at least a familiar concept from our pop culture. We were terrified, but could comprehend what was happening. This is... alien, and there’s no way it isn’t leading up to something big. 

Maybe they’re summoning giant bugs the size of Dune worms. Maybe they’re going to morph into something even more terrifying than they already are. Maybe that sound is going to wake up billions of alien microbes in the upper atmosphere that will convert all the air on the planet to methane.

Maybe they’re letting their masters know that the human species has been largely eradicated and the planet is theirs for the taking. 

Maybe all of the above.

And somehow, the image of thousands of upright human corpses with alien bugs bursting out of their skulls is even more frightening, more eerie, more sickening, than a bunch of mere lurching zombies. 

The last time it was like this, there was at least a reason to hunker down - there were walkers on the move. Now, the opposite is true, and whatever is in store, I doubt staying put will help. I guess it’s instinctive behavior - dig in until the danger has passed. 

You know what? The rest of them can play dead if they want. I’m getting out of here. It’s a beautiful September day - 70 degrees, glorious, cloudless skies, a light breeze. I could hop in my car, but I walk the half-mile to Ocean Drive, striding confidently. (I’m not actually feeling confident, but “fake it til you make it,” as they say.)

I knock on the door of Chez Gene, as its residents call it. Joe - musician Joe - answers. “Hey,” he says, “Sus - great to see you. Come in, come in.”

We enter the living area closest to the front door and join Mel on the sofa. She says “Nice to see someone willing to leave their house these days. I’m impressed. How’d you do it?”

“One foot in front of the other. Try it sometime.”

“Aren’t you scared?” she says.

“Shitless. But I figure whatever’s happening with the brain bugs, it’s probably leading up to the final eradication of the human race.”

“Exactly,” says Joe.

“But if it is, do you think you’re any safer in your house?”

“No,” says Joe. “But I _feel_ safer.”

“And that’s worth everything in your life grinding to a halt?”

“But it’s not,” says Mel. “We’re busy writing songs, and recording them in Gene’s little studio. We’re actually more productive now than before. Wanna hear one?”

Do I want to be serenaded by a Grammy winning singer/songwriter and his kick-ass bassist collaborator? “Hell, yeah,” I say. I move to the love seat as Joe fires up the very expensive looking keyboard on the coffee table.

“Which one do you wanna do?” Joe asks Mel

“How about ‘Requiem’, says Mel. Joe agrees.

“Requiem, huh,” I say. “No offense, but it sounds like a downer.”

“It’s actually ‘Requiem / Legacy,’ for what it’s worth,” says Joe, who launches into a piano accompaniment reminiscent of a guitar-picking pattern. It starts on a minor key, but moves quickly to a major one, then to another major and down to a minor chord that gives me chills. I don’t know anything about music theory, so I can’t tell you more than that about the chords. But I can tell you the words.

Joe sings:

_More than empty_

_More than lost_

_Weeping Mother Earth_

_Who will write_

_The story of_

_The time of our rebirth_

_More than broken_

_More than torn_

_Scattered to the winds_

_Who will sing a_

_Requiem_

_For all that’s ever been_

Now the music becomes much more complex harmonically and Mel adds a carefully composed melody - different from the vocal melody - on guitar. It’s not _jazzy_ , but there’s a lot going on, and the movement between the complex chords is less predictable. We’ve left pop and folk behind and are edging quietly into prog rock.

God, I wish I knew more about music.

_Eons swirl around us_

_Endless sea of time_

_We live but a moment_

_A blink of the cosmic eye_

_Our empires rise_

_Our towers fall_

_Cities turn to dust_

_We live but a moment_

_In a swirl wanderlust_

Now Joe’s accompaniment explodes into a flurry of notes in complex patterns and the chord progression becomes even more unusual. 

_Will you write our requiem_

_To all eternity?_

_Will you hold our story_

_In living memory?_

_You, our children_

_You, our legacy_

Now the tone of the song shifts to something... anthemic. Again, the chord progression is complex, and does strange things to my emotions. As does Joe’s high vocal melody and Mel’s even higher harmony. As do the words.

_These are my people_

_This is my tribe_

_These are my stories of_

_The struggle to survive_

_[Mel] To survive_

_These are my children_

_These are my gods_

_This is our legacy_

_To survive against the odds_

_And all this is yours_

_[Mel] All these roads_

_Yours to explore_

_[Mel] All these towers high_

_Yours to outgrow_

_[Mel] All the hollow men_

_Yours to build more_

_[Mel] All the open lands... All the towers high_

_These are my people_

_This is my tribe_

_[Mel] These are my gods_

_This is our legacy: to survive_

_This is my legacy_

The song ends on an unresolved chord, played in a simple pattern, repeating and fading, that seems to drift ahead into an unknown future.

I’m overwhelmed and in tears. What did I just hear?

“What do you think?” says Mel, a little uncertain.

Joe - you know, the Grammy-winning former rock star - is more confident. “Pretty cool, huh.”

Yeah. Pretty cool.

  
  
  


OLLIE / _ANDY_

_I can’t get the sound out of my head. The sound of the brain bugs._

_It’s not the buzzing sound everyone else hears. It’s a constant, complex humming. There’s detailed information in it that I can’t even begin to interpret. But I can sense feelings. Some are powerful, incomprehensible alien emotions that make my - well Ollie’s - head hurt. If I manage to screen those out for a few minutes, I get intimations (Tina taught me that word. Cool, huh?) of confusion, emptiness, incompleteness. Of desperate longing._

_More clearly, I sense simple biological hunger. The bugs haven’t eaten in a month. Most of the worker bugs are nearly dead. The brain bugs can hold out longer, but soon they’ll either starve to death or give up on their vigil and go on a feeding frenzy. It’s not their decision to make, however. I gather that much. But I know which one I’m rooting for._

_They’re not sad or angry or frantic or anything a human being would be if he was starving. They’re sentient, but I think they lack free will. They’re... how can I put this? Self-aware organic automatons._

That’s just the brain bugs, by the way. The worker bugs by themselves are about as intelligent as a strand of hair with legs. Cut loose, they just skitter along at top speed until they bump into something, then they bounce off of it, unless they hit it mouth first, in which case they try to eat it.

The brain bugs, though, have incredibly powerful cognitive abilities. I sense that they’re capable of comprehending Stephen Hawking-level mathematics and theoretical physics. They have a language which at least _feels_ like it’s like a hundred times more complex than English. 

_Which is scary - you’d think it would be incredibly easy for them to learn our language if they had the slightest interest in communicating with us._

When I hear their communications, all I get is white noise. But Andy, I suppose because of what he is - whatever _that_ is - can sense the structure of it.

_Yeah, and it’s completely overwhelming. It’s like they can think in five dimensions. Frankly, I’m glad they’re not talking anymore._

Except for whatever message they’re sending right now.

_Right, but even the message isn’t that complicated by their standards, and it’s on a loop, repeating like every ten seconds. Compared to human speech, they cram a lot of information into those seconds, but it’s possible to memorize at least the parts I can perceive. You’re lucky you’re only hearing white noise. For me, it’s like a car alarm that never gets turned off._

Sorry about that.

_Yeah, well, no one ever said being dead would be a cakewalk. It has some disadvantages._

Anyway, we just explained all this to Susmita and Miriam (Anais wouldn’t come out to play, for some reason), and they’ve given up their skepticism about Andy. I don’t think they suddenly believe in ghosts, they’re just willing to assume _I’m_ genuinely perceiving weird stuff and calling it “Andy.”

_And I’m cool with that. Like we keep saying, the whole thing is ridiculous - I wouldn’t believe it if I were them._

Do you... do you think they could be right?

_I dunno. Let’s see. How many fingers am I holding up?_

I have no idea.

_Well, there you go._

I think we should clarify something. We’ve said that the brain bugs are sending a message, and they are. But it’s probably not directed at anything on this planet. Because it’s not just in sound form - the sound is probably incidental. It’s being broadcast on multiple frequencies, from radio to Gamma waves. 

The message is headed for outer space.

_I keep hoping if I listen closely enough, for long enough, and match the parts of the message to the shifting emotions associated with it, I might be able to figure out what it says. Or at least the gist._

_But you know what? I don’t think there’s anything to figure out. We all already know, because what else could it be: they’re calling their masters. The mothership. The final wave._

_This is the endgame. It has to be._

_God help us._

...

...

Andy? Is... is there a god?

_What, you think I know, just because I’m dead?_

I thought you might.

_Sorry. I looked for him, left a few messages. But nothing._

Crap.

_Proves nothing, of course. But we’re probably on our own. Govern yourself accordingly._

  
  


TINA

This is it. It’s all over but the screaming. The other shoe is about to drop and crush us flat. I just know it.

All I want is to be with Mac until it ends. To love him and make love to him and affirm my life until I don’t have it anymore. We’ve barely left our bed, much less the room, except to go to the bathroom. We’ve got snacks and drinks, and we’re going to ride this out alone together, alternately eating cheetos, fucking, and sleeping, for the brief rest of our lives.

We’re being as quiet as we can - we don’t want to make everyone else jealous, since they’re all in another terror-celibacy phase. But we just can’t stop. I guess our DNA thinks it can save the species if we just reproduce, which, let’s face it, is DNA’s solution to everything. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like it should get nailed.

We’ve stopped using condoms. What’s the point? Plus, if we do somehow survive, we really should work on repopulating, right? Why not get a head start?

It’s a shame. I really thought we’d have more time. I was starting to think I might just have a chance to grow old. With children, grandchildren, the whole deal. I thought I’d get to see the rise of Civilization 2.0. 

How naive I was.

“Mac,” I say, “There’s something we need to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last section of Joe and Mel's song is something I wrote maybe 25 years ago, the end of a song for which I had no beginning, and that scene seemed like as good an excuse and context as any to finally write the rest of it.
> 
> I have music for the whole thing, but it's not yet recorded. I do however have my old recording of the Legacy section, which you can listen to/download here:   
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ELhC-6_odB-8Hs9AzNwPSHfcOyxh0eW1/view?usp=sharing


	3. Bring it On

JOE

Tina has gathered together everyone she knows, or at least everyone she’s close to, in Bob’s Burgers. We’re crowded into the booths, and it’s SRO for some late arrivals. I don’t recognize all of them, but I’ve seen all of them around. 

All of the Belchers are here, of course, and their respective significant others. There’s that odd kid who thinks he’s carrying around the spirit of his dead brother in his brain, and that he’s in some sort of communication with the Bugs. Which is downright Daffy.

Sorry.

I barely know her, but I was pleased to see Millie Frock walk in with her beau-hunk boyfriend and seat herself with ease. The first time I saw her, she was barely mobile and in constant pain.

All of Tina’s spouses are present, of course. The Lara twins are seated in the next booth, with Jodi draped over both their laps. Occasionally, Jodi reaches out and I take her hand for a moment. Mac is seated across from them, as is Susmita. Miriam is standing by the bathroom door, looking grim. Anais is standing by the front door, looking almost dissociative. I wonder what’s going on with them.

Gene’s little family of choice is crammed into another booth - his main squeeze, Courtney, is beside him; across from them is... what’s her name? Jacklyn?  _ Jocelyn _ . That’s it. Can’t figure that one out. She has a constant deer-in-the-headlights expression and has the inflections of a valley girl, but listening to her talk, she’s clearly quite intelligent. 

Leaning against her is Jess Devlin, the young medic who took care of me after my run-in with that bug. I’ve only ever seen her in a professional capacity, and she was all business, so it’s nice to see her blissed out, radiating warmth and love in her girlfriend’s direction. 

Louise and Rudy are seated across from me and Marshmallow, to whom I was only just now introduced. More man than I’ll ever be and more woman than I could ever handle. Formidable. And a sweetheart.

The elder Belchers are seated a couple of booths down with their respective mates - Linda with Calvin Fischoeder, an odd fellow with a white eyepatch. Louise tells me he had been the Belchers’ landlord and had in fact owned about 25 percent of the real estate in Seymour’s Bay. Prior to being involved with Linda, He and Tina had dated. Interesting, that.

Bob’s girlfriend is possibly the hottest woman I’ve ever seen up close. A former beauty queen  _ and  _ a Ph.D. in astrophysics. That’s just insane, and I think I’m in love. Unfortunately, she’s absolutely besotted with Bob Belcher. I mean, good for him. He’s a good guy, I’m glad he’s happy. But I haven’t had a hopeless crush like this since high school. I forgot how much they hurt.

Speaking of envy, I recognize my namesake, Joe Brewster, the former rock star. I wasn’t that into his stuff back into the day, not my style, but he’s damned good. I’ve often thought I’d give my right arm for that kind of musical talent. 

I  _ did _ give my left hand. I wonder what I got for that. Ability to carry a tune, maybe?

Next to him is Mel, who, while I’m grooving on women, I would describe as the hottest little Arab nerdette I’ve ever seen. She’s currently Joe’s girlfriend but is also involved with Gene, Jocelyn, and Jess. 

I wonder if there’s room for one more in that little arrangement.

Damn, gotta stop thinking about women. As Jodi’s extended hand and Louise’s sweet smile remind me, I’m not exactly hurting in that department. And it’s neither the time nor the place. 

The rest of the crowd - about a dozen people - are mostly familiar faces I don’t know by name. 

Tina is standing behind the counter, calm and poised. Inscrutable. “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today,” she says.

I don’t know Tina very well. She seems like an earnest type; smart, but, to hear Louise tell it, given to barely restrained romanticism and melodrama.

I get the obvious joke out of the way. “To reveal the identity of the murderer?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” says Tina. “But what a coincidence that you brought up the subject of death.”

Oh, boy. I see where this is going.

Rudy, clueless, panics. “Oh, no - is someone sick? Are  _ you _ sick? Am  _ I _ sick? Who’s si--”

Louise cuts him off. “Rudy! Chill.”

“Sorry.”

I expect Tina to be annoyed, but she just smiles warmly at him and says “Oh, Rudy, I love your compassion and humanity. No, no one is sick. But let’s face it, we’re all going to die. I mean, everyone dies, but I mean it’s probably going to happen soon, and to all of us.”

Usually, this would be the part where all the actors in the crowd would go “rooba rooba rooba” in frightened tones. _ What could she possibly mean? _

But, of course, we know exactly what she’s talking about. 

Personally, I’ve been holding out some hope for a future featuring humanity in at least a supporting role. But we’ve all, me included, been cowering in our houses, waiting for the end, or at least the beginning of the end. So the reaction from the crowd is muted, inasmuch as silence can be said to be ‘muted.’ 

Tina continues. “So, since we may all be nearly out of time, I wanted to take a moment to tell you all that I love you. Every one of you. I have the best friends, the best family, the best community a person could ever have. I’m going to tell you all personally, one at a time, but I also wanted to tell you as a group how much you all mean to me.

“I haven’t had a long life. But it’s been a good one, mostly because of the people in this room. And some conspicuous absentees, some of whom I had a chance to tell I loved them before they died, some who passed before I had the opportunity. Those, I’ve thanked in my heart, and I’ve sent my love out into the cosmos to them, just in case there is something beyond this life.”

There’s not a dry eye in the house. As I said, I don’t really know Tina, but like everyone else in the room, I lost almost everyone I knew and loved five years ago, and almost my entire species, and I live on the edge of a bottomless pit of grief that bubbles up and consumes me at the slightest cue. I’m only holding back from sobbing so I can hear the rest of what Tina has to say.

“One other thing - I think we need to take a moment to toast the entire human race - Louise is handing out glasses of water for that purpose” (I was wondering why she excused herself a minute ago.)

When everyone has a glass, Louise sits back down next to Rudy.

“So,” says Tina, raising her glass, “to humanity, a species so fucked up that if the alien plague hadn’t gotten us, we were on the verge of destroying  _ ourselves _ \- and taking most of the biosphere with us. A species that produced Da Vinci and Pol Pot, Mozart and Son of Sam, Catch-22 and Rule 34. Capable of profound kindness and compassion, and mass sociopathy. 

“We were a mixed bag, but my God, at our best, we were magnificent. Not just the giants like our greatest artists and leaders, but everyday individuals, people no one but their friends and families remembered after they were gone, who were kind and giving and loving and creative and fascinating. 

“On the whole, I think we were a failed experiment - though it’s hard to believe it looking at all of you. But if you study history, well, clearly something wasn’t working. Something was just... off. 

“The Earth will be better off without us - assuming the bugs don’t manage to fuck it up even worse than we did. But we had our moments. Our great achievements. Our triumphs. And we had people like you.

“History will show, among other - mostly negative - things, that we were capable of transcendent love. Love more powerful than the fear of death. Love true and steadfast and multivariate and all-encompassing. All but the worst among us at least  _ wanted  _ to love and be loved. 

“I don’t know, maybe I’m just romanticizing what it is to be a herd animal. Maybe, in the big picture, we’re no big loss. Maybe, on the cosmic scale, no species could be.

“All I know is that the people in this room represent everything good that our species  _ could _ be, and... and that more of us would have been, maybe, given more time. I love all of you, and I love every human being that ever had a scrap of decency in them. We tried, goddammit. We tried.

Tina wipes her eyes, and raises her glass higher. “To the human race.”

Thirty voices echo hers. “To the human race!” 

  
  


SUSMITA

Then, as if on cue, my phone makes a long “beepbeepbeepbeep” sound, an alert from my chat client. 

The only person who regularly texts me who isn’t in this room right now is Howard. If Howard is trying to reach me at an unexpected time, particularly under the current circumstances, it’s got to be important. I put down my glass and bring up the message. A satellite photo of the Mid-Atlantic, partially occluded by a dark, cigar-shaped object. 

Holy shit.

Above the photo, the text:  _ This is a screenshot from my spy sat. The object in the foreground is roughly disk-shaped with a diameter of about 180 meters and multiple, seemingly random, protrusions. It has moved into a geostationary orbit 200 miles directly above Seymour’s Bay. _

_ Call me. _

I leap up and, without excusing myself, work my way to the door. Anais and Miriam - who surely received the same message, are already on the move. All eyes are on the three of us.

Tina has come out from behind the counter to intercept me. Before she can ask what I’m up to, I hug her and tell her “I love you, too.”

‘You’re the best,” says Tina. “So, um, I won’t keep you, but I’d really like to know what’s sent three of our local scientists running out the door at top speed.”

I don’t know what to do. I want to tell her, but I don’t want to get into a discussion, and I don’t want to cause a panic. 

Tina continues. “...because it seems like it might be relevant to the subject at hand.”

Fuck it. I hold up my phone so Tina can see the photo. Then I glance pointedly upward. Her eyes bulge. She gets it.

“Whoa,” she whispers. “So this is it, huh. It’s really happening.”

“Yes,” I say, even more quietly. “But we don’t actually know what. I’ll keep you informed. But please, just tell everyone I said Howard sent us an important message. Nothing more, okay?”

“Okay.”

As I run for Miriam’s inevitable Tesla, with Anais, the only thing that gives me hope is that the alien ship isn’t already incinerating us from space with some sort of energy beam.

On the other hand, maybe they just like to toy with their food. Maybe that’s what the Bugs have been doing all along. Whatever’s going on, I decide - rather perversely - to enjoy the absurdity of it all, for however long I have left.  _ This will be fun _ , I tell myself, forcing the thought into my head.  _ An alien invasion. Cool. Just like the movies.  _

Somewhere, Henry Haber - my first crush, believer that any alien species we encountered would destroy us - is laughing his ass off. 

Good for him.

  
  


LOUISE

“What the hell just happened? What did she say to you?” 

Tina doesn’t answer me, unless “uhhhhhhhh” counts as a reply.

“Seriously, T,” says Rudy, “what’s going on? What did she show you.”

“Uhhhhhhh...”

“Tina! What the fuck?” Jesus, Mom, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

“It was just a... a message from Howard, their NASA guy in Orlando. It said he needed to discuss something with them.”

“Tina, please,” says Dad. “Your jaw dropped and all three of them bolted out of here. And you’re a very bad liar. Something big is happening.”

Andrea is more excited than frightened - she’s a scientist and they live for this shit, even if it’s going to get them killed. “If the message was from Howard, it has to do with the bugs. I’m guessing Susmita swore you to secrecy, but if this is the end, we deserve to know.”

Tina caves - visibly. She slumps and bows her head. “Dammit, dammit, dammit, you’re right. I’m sorry, Susmita. The photo was from one of Howard’s satellites. It was an object that looked like some sort of giant spaceship, and it’s in stationary orbit 200 miles above Seymour’s Bay. Please don’t panic. Please.”

There is nervous murmuring throughout the restaurant. This is probably it. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen soon. It may be the end.

But Tina’s right, there’s no point in panicking. It’s beyond our control. Our fate is sealed, for better or probably worse. To their credit, everyone here has come to the same conclusion. Nothing to do but sit tight and pray to whatever god you think exists.

Andy speaks up above the rooba rooba. “I’ve gotta go,” and heads for the door.

I hate to ask,” says Gene, “but why?”

“I’m needed elsewhere,” says Rudy. He reaches the door and opens it. He pauses for a moment and turns around. “Don’t worry.” He steps out and heads west toward the park.

“Ah,” says Gene, “cryptic yet uninformative, with just a hint of ‘what the fuck?’”

The room is completely silent until Calvin Fischoeder, with almost infinite dignity, stands and declares “friends, do not be afraid. It is a good day to die.  _ And  _ a good day to live. We will face our fate - whichever it is - with our heads held high and pride in our hearts, together in this circle - well this rectangle - of friendship and love, as our best selves.”

Damn. Who knew there was a poet lurking in that weird mind of his. But I’ve got to contribute something to the moment. “Translation: bring it on, motherfuckers!”

There is scattered laughter. Even Fischoeder is amused.

Tina disagrees. “I liked Calvin’s version better.”


	4. Or is it?

SUSMITA

“It began to descend about three minutes ago,” says Howard. “And not in a normal reentry pattern. Straight down. Crazy.”

Howard’s face takes up most of my laptop’s screen. The feed from his satellite fills the 70” living room TV. Miriam and Anais are next to me on the sofa, holding hands. Close on our heels, everyone who had been with us at the restaurant pours in behind us, filling the room to capacity.

Pertinent questions come to mind. “Howard,” I say, “assuming it continues like that, where will it touch down?”

“Hold on. looks like about... 500 feet out from the Wharf, over the water. Where, interestingly, there seems to be someone waiting in a boat. I’ll zoom in if you want, see if you can identify them. Figure it’s your local schizophrenic?”

“Yep,” I say - no point getting into the complicated bit about how there might be something more going on. “So when is it going to get here?”

“At its current velocity...” Howard whistles appreciatively “assuming it doesn’t start obeying the laws of physics or anything, you’ve got about six minutes. I’d say to prepare for some eardrum-shattering sonic booms, but the fucking thing seems to be frictionless. They must have some technology that redirects the air around it so that it... I mean, maybe it extended a vacuum ahead of itself before it descended, allowing it to... Or maybe... no. I have no fucking idea how they’re doing it. It’s passing through the mesosphere like a fucking hologram.”

“The mesosphere,” explains Andrea to the scientifically challenged, “is where meteors burn up.”

Rooba rooba rooba.

“Meteors move a  _ lot  _ faster,” she continues, “but something that shape and size should be encountering ferocious wind-resistance. Can I get closer to the TV, get a better look?”

The sea parts for the astrophysicist.

We can now make out the shape of the vessel more clearly, though the satellite’s camera can’t adjust its focus quickly enough to get a detailed look at the quickly descending object. 

It’s only roughly circular. There are protrusions on the sides, top, and bottom. And thank God. If it were an actual flying  _ saucer, _ I’d question my grip on reality. According to Howard, it’s about the width of two football fields at its widest point, and about half that its narrowest. 

Other than its irregular shape, the object is featureless. It could easily be mistaken for an asteroid, except that it’s clearly been moving under its own power since it was first sighted, and is currently circumventing a law of physics or two.

“What’s its velocity?” asks Andrea.

“About a thousand klicks an hour, but slowing. So, good news: they’re not planning on slamming into the surface of the ocean and flattening your friend. Look, you might want to all head for the Wharf. If they’re here to destroy us, cowering in this house won’t save you.” 

“ _ We’re _ not cowering,” says Louise, a little shaky, “ _ you’re _ cowering.”

“Come on, think about it. You might as well get a good close look. How often do you get to greet an alien spaceship? Worst case scenario, it’s a cool way to die.”

Miriam laughs bitterly. “Easy you for you to say, from a thousand miles away.”

“I get that. But seriously, I envy you. Susmita - take your iPhone and stream me the video. I want to see this.”

“Dammit, Howard,“ I say, frantic, “these are the guys who sent their bugs to zombify us. I plan to hide in the basement until they leave.”

Andrea puts her hand on my shoulder. “Susmita, if they wanted to destroy us, they could have by now. And if they’re still planning to destroy us, there’s not a damn thing we can do.” She hugs me. “Do whatever you want. I’ve been waiting for this all my life. I’m going to go watch the alien spaceship land.”

She heads to the foyer and out the door, leaving it open for others who might care to follow her.

Bob Belcher, clearly torn between his love of Andrea and his fear of the aliens, mutters “oh my God,” and chooses love, following her to, he probably thinks, his own doom.

What follows is frankly comical. Every head in the room is darting back and forth, surveying faces, attempting to determine who’s staying, who’s leaving, and which instinct to trust - hoping there’s an obvious consensus to follow, and hoping that the zeitgeist says “Cower. Cower like the wind!”

When no such consensus is reached, there is an empty moment - dead silence - before Calvin Fischoeder takes Linda Belcher’s hand with a gallant half-bow and says “shall we, my dear?”

Linda smiles - "We shall" - and follows him out. As they reach the doorway, Calvin turns. “Oh, come now,” he chides us. “Manners, people. We have guests. Come greet our visitors.”

There’s another brief, empty moment, followed quickly by the sound of over twenty people releasing bated breaths in unison -- Not out of relief so much as in a universal, unspoken statement: “fuck it.”

Then, a cacophony: the same number of people speaking at once, in variations on a theme. “Fine." "Why not?” “Let’s do this.” “Good. Might as well get it over with.” “It is a good day to die.” “Beats waiting for it, I guess” “Well, it’s not like I had any long-term plans, anyway.” “OK. Right. OK. We’re doing this. Right?”

I also hear this exchange: “Don’t worry, Louise, I’ll protect you.” “No, my sweet doofus, you won’t. You can’t. But if we go down, we go down together.”

As we all file out the door to our respective Teslas, I add my own bon mot to the occasion, something I heard a friend say once. “You only live once; might as well get it over with.”

  
  


TINA

As our small fleet of silver electric cars approaches the Wharf, we see that it is already crowded by onlookers, and what is probably the entire population of the town is converging on the seaside attraction - by car or on foot. And no wonder - the alien ship is clearly visible, probably less than a mile up and descending rapidly. 

And silently. No low rumble or no high, keening, electronic wail like in the movies. Nothing - which is somehow even more terrifying. And the ship’s irregularly-shaped surface is completely smooth; no detail, like a CGI object before all the lighting and textures have been added. So while we know it’s the size of a building and around a mile above the surface of the water, it could just as easily be someone’s weird remote-controlled drone a hundred feet up. Except that its movement, straight down, is perfectly smooth. And it does keep getting larger...

Everyone has ditched their cars in the street once they’ve gotten close to the Wharf. Shoreline Drive is a sea of silver Teslas parked at random angles; it looks like a watch band from the 70s. And if we all actually survive this encounter, there’s going to be mass confusion as everyone tries to find their own car.

First World problems.

Something like a hundred people line the outer edge of the Wharf, leaning on the railing. The rest, less brave perhaps, hang back - as if the 20 or 30 feet between them and the railing will somehow shield them from the worst of whatever awaits us. I note with some sense of pride that all of my contingent have chosen to get in close, and have joined the courageous - or at least the more curious than fearful - along the edge. The edge of the Wharf, the edge of the continent, the edge of the future.

From my perch, I can see Ollie, who has chosen to greet our new alien overlords in a paddleboat. It wouldn’t have been my first choice -- a rowboat would have been somehow more poetic, a speedboat more connotative of confidence. But the plastic craft, with its googly eye and smile decals on the front, was probably just the first craft he could find.

Fuck it. If this is the End, well, no one can say we were above a little absurdity, even in our final moments.

The ship is only a few hundred feet up now, and slowing to a halt. From the moment I first saw it on our TV screen, I knew it reminded me of something. The shape. But I couldn’t place it. I was too busy panicking to devote a lot of neurons to the matter. Finally, it hits me. It’s not a perfect replica, but close enough.

It resembles nothing more than a widened, slightly flattened-out Nintendo GameCube controller. Like what God would use to play video games. (When God plays video games, is it always in God Mode, whether he wants it to be or not?) 

A controller for the Nintendo BorgCube.

I catch Louise’s eye. She sees it, too. So, unsurprisingly, does Rudy. They shake their heads at me, mouths slightly agape. Ollie’s smiley-faced Happy Feet TM  Paddle Boat is no longer the most absurd part of this historic moment. 

  
_ Maybe _ , I think, giddily,  _ they’re just here to challenge us to a real-life Centipede tournament. _

No. If they were, their ship would look like a giant Trac-ball. 

The ship has come to a stop about a hundred feet up. Sci-fi movies seem to take this kind of thing for granted, but what the hell is holding it up there? It’s not firing retro-rockets. Hell, it’s not even glowing on the bottom or emitting any sort of light. Do they have anti-gravity? Is that a thing?

Mac is behind me, holding me to him. We’re flanked by the rest of my little family of choice, my family of birth, my dearest friends, and the community I love. And isn’t that how we all want to die, if we have to? Surrounded by friends and family? I really did choose the last possible day to say my goodbyes. 

Unless we get lucky.

For what seems like an hour - but is probably in reality a little less than a minute - nothing happens. Nothing at all. The only sound is the sloshing of the low waves against the Wharf’s support structure below us. Even the ever present seagulls have shut up - or, more likely, left in terror or confusion. There is no movement but the gentle rise and fall of the ocean; and deep in the shadow of the alien craft, Ollie’s paddle boat bobs almost imperceptibly.

Finally, a thin shaft of light emanates from the bottom of the ship; it’s just wide enough to illuminate Ollie and his little craft. He stands and speaks. Despite his distance, he is clearly audible, speaking in a normal conversational tone. It’s as if he’s just a few feet away - thanks, clearly, to some alien technology.

“Hi, everyone,” he says.

“Hi, Ollie,” we respond, practically in unison - albeit in hushed tones. Some of us say “hiya,” some “yo. ‘Sup.” But We’re all being casually conversational. I don’t know what that means. Maybe it’s just a reflex. Maybe it means we are, to a man, burnt out from all the insane shit life has thrown at us over the past five years, and nothing can phase us anymore. Maybe it’s just that compared to a giant alien spaceship hovering overhead, a really great sound system just isn’t that shocking. 

Maybe it’s that like me, everyone is getting the sense that we’re going to live through this. I mean, they could have gone to the center of town and gone all Independence Day on us, but they’re doing this - whatever it is - instead.

Ollie continues. “So, uh, I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been in contact with the aliens for a while now. I haven’t understood anything they’ve told me, but I think they’ve been kind of prepping me for this thing right here. Learning how to cram their language into terms a human being could understand, which is kind of like teaching a toddler Calculus using finger puppets. But they managed, and they have a message for us.”

They want to talk. Holy shit, I think we get to live.

“I’m not sure I completely understand - no, I’m  _ sure _ I don’t completely understand - but I think I can do this. OK.

“First of all, they’re... well, not exactly  _ sorry. _ They don’t have remorse; it’s not one of their emotions. But they want us to know that this whole thing has been a big mistake. An error. The contaminant that caused the plague. The bugs. Everything. They... apologize. 

“I don’t think they’re capable of understanding what they’ve done. They’re a hive intelligence. They think they’ve drastically reduced the size of our hive. They literally can’t conceive of what they’ve actually done - killed billions of individual minds - because the idea of an individual sentient organism is entirely outside their experience. It would be like telling one of us that every one of our cells had its own credit rating and was underwater on a mortgage. Or something. Damn. Even that doesn’t quite get it across. 

“Anyway, they didn’t know we were here because they couldn’t sense us - that’s a whole other thing. I’ll explain later. The point is, the... substance that caused the plague was phase one of a terraforming project. Well, I guess, a whatever-they-call-their-homeworld-forming -- project. The bugs were actually phase three or four, but they got triggered early, because conditions here weren’t what they expected... it’s a mess. They totally botched it.

“But here’s the thing - they still need the planet.”

Oh, crap. It  _ is _ all over. Dammit, Ollie, why did you have to give us hope just to tear it away from...

“Wait wait wait...” Ollie can tell that panic is sweeping through the crowd. “They’re willing to share.  _ Going  _ to share. It’s not up for discussion. But we can coexist. It’ll be complicated, but it’ll work, and we can have normal lives. I mean, it’ll be weird, but... Okay, wait, give me a second.”

As Ollie gathers his thoughts, hushed conversations break out across the Wharf - mostly people asking each other questions none of us can possibly answer. 

“Coexist?” says Dean. “If they have to terraform, like, change the ecology to suit their own needs, how can we coexist, just from a biological perspective?”

“Maybe,” says Rudy, “they can change the environment  _ less _ , and both species can adapt.”   
  
“Sounds unpleasant at best,” says Grant.

“Hey,” says Jodi, “who cares about the details? We get to live. You caught that, right? No extinction, no mass slaughter, no desperate fight for survival, no zombie apocalypse. Everything else is gravy. Weird, alien gravy with suspicious lumps in it, but gravy.”

She has a point. It’s reasonable to be apprehensive about what coexisting with an alien hive mind is going to entail, but yeah, hot damn, we get to live! We should be celebrating. We should--

“So,” says Ollie, “here’s what’s going to happen: The bugs are going to go away. In fact, they’re already gone. They disintegrated into their component molecules about three minutes ago, along with every corpse they were animating. I’ll explain that part later. 

“Anyway, the plan is, they get the land, we get the sea.” Furrowed brows all around. Do they think we can live underwater? But I see Miriam’s and Anais’ expressions perk up, and suddenly I get it - or at least, I realize they have a plan in case the aliens think we can be aquatic.

“With their help - and using Miriam and Anais’ plans and concepts (I put in a good word for you guys), we’re going to construct a giant floating city - and eventually others, as needed - on the north sea. It’ll need to be up there because the aliens are going to accelerate the greenhouse effect to warn the planet to the point where they have their desired temperature range along a three-thousand-mile wide band straddling the equator, which they’ll transform biologically to suit their needs. 

“Eventually they’ll be able to adapt to lower temperatures and spread out across the continents, but we’ll have the ocean to ourselves. 

“The process will take decades - centuries even, to  _ fully _ play out. But with the aliens’ help, we’ll have a floating city large enough for a million people completed in just over a year. Considering we’re down to about a hundred thousand worldwide, there should be plenty of elbow room for quite a while.”

Hope and relief battle grief and revulsion in my head, and probably everyone else’s. 

_ We get to live. _

_ We have to give up the land. All of it. _

_ A great, floating city - very cool. I’ve seen Anais’ designs. _

_ Leave Seymour’s Bay? Leave behind literally everything I’ve ever known?  _

_ We get to live. _

_ They’re going to destroy the entire ecosphere on every continent. Millions upon millions of species, gone. Every acre of land, every inland river, lake and sea, transformed into an alien hellscape.  _

_ Well, maybe not a hellscape. Hard to say.  _

_ But definitely something alien. _

_ They’re letting us live. _

_ We’ll be exiles, limited to a reservation, like the long suffering indigenous peoples of this continent. This continent we have to abandon, along with all the others. Everything we’ve built and created. Our entire civilization. _

_ We get to live. _

_ We get to be together. _

_ It’s not over.  _

_ We get to live. _

_ That’s enough. It has to be. _

_ For now. _

“I know you have a million questions. I’ll answer all I can, I promise. By the way, everyone on earth can hear me right now, in their own language. Neat huh? - I should have mentioned that before. Anyway, at least you’re all on the same page. But for now, I’m gonna return to shore and the aliens are going to return to orbit and stay there until our floating city is ready.

“Thanks for listening - not that you had a choice. And one last thought:

“They’re not our enemies. They don’t hate us - they don’t even have that emotion. They don’t want to destroy us. They want to do right by us. They’re committed to taking over the planet - they don’t have a choice at this point. But they’re going to work with us. Under the circumstances, they consider it a moral imperative to not only allow us to survive, but help us thrive and develop. 

“They’re not our friends - the concept is meaningless to them - but they’re our allies. They’re colonizers, conquerors even. But they’re going to treat us a lot better than any human conquerors ever treated their conquered. Compared to any given Conquistador, they’re way, way more... human.”

With that, the giant BorgCube controller speeds silently upward, out of sight, and into orbit, and Ollie sits down and begins paddling toward the shore.

When he arrives, there are five hundred friends there to greet him.

  
  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

TINA

After an extended hero’s welcome on the beach, Ollie - temporarily dodging questions - has led us to the Wharf Arts center, now full to capacity, where he stands at the podium, center stage. No longer assisted by the aliens’ audio technology, his voice is amplified by more earthly means. 

But it  _ is _ going out to anyone on earth with a wireless modem, courtesy of Susmita’s iPhone, which she is streaming to Howard in Orlando. Howard is bouncing that signal to everyone in his rather extensive worldwide network though a communications satellite he finally, and just in time, succeeded in hacking into after a year of research and brute effort. 

It won’t reach every human being, like Ollie’s previous message, but enough that word will get around almost universally. 

Seated beside the podium are the mayor and our resident scientists; the former to address community concerns and planning issues, the latter (Andrea, Anais, and Miriam) to translate any confusing scientific concepts and get everyone excited about floating city living.

“So, um, I know you’ve got questions, and your questions have questions, and most of  _ them  _ are pregnant with additional questions - and who doesn’t love the pitter-patter of little quandaries? 

“Anyway, I think I can anticipate a lot of them, and I’ll cover everything I can think of. If there’s anything else you need to know when I’m done, raise your hand. I can do this all night, if necessary. I’m, like, insanely pumped. 

“So, I’ll start at the beginning -- and bear with me, it will take a minute for me to get to the aliens. You need some deep background first, particularly those of you who don’t know me personally.

“Before the plague, I had a twin named Andy. We were amazingly close, even for identical twins. Practically psychic. He bumped his head, I got the bruise. I mean, not literally, but I would  _ feel _ it, somehow.

“The plague killed everyone in my family but me. It was awful, but losing my narcissist dad and my self-obsessed brother was one thing. Losing Andy was like having half my body amputated. I couldn’t function for months - my friends had to feed me, I didn’t bathe, almost never moved. Slept 22 hours a day. 

“Look, we’ve all been through incalculable losses. I don’t have the stones to tell anyone here that they can’t imagine what I was going through. But most people were able to get on with surviving. I couldn’t.

“Then, after about four months of this, Andy started talking to me. Calling to me. I didn’t understand what he was saying or what he wanted, but I knew what  _ I _ wanted. What I needed to do. I had to go find him. In whatever form he existed.

“I’m sorry to those of you who worried about me when I disappeared. Who figured I was dead. I have the best friends in the world, and it must have seemed like an insult to go off to my likely death - possibly by suicide - when they’d done so much just to keep me alive for so long.

“I’m sorry.

“Anyway, it took close to a year, but I found him. I was just outside Philadelphia when I caught up with his ghost. I didn’t see it, but he said something intelligible to me for the first time after all those months of vague signals and weird emotions.

“He said ‘hi.’

“Then he took up residence in my brain.

“But here’s the thing. It...”

Ollie’s expression becomes pained. He can’t speak. I haven’t seen him look like that since before he disappeared.

He gathers himself.

“It wasn’t Andy. It was me, being reflected back to myself by the aliens. They’d been trying to communicate with me for a year, but couldn’t - partly because compared to their language, ours is about as sophisticated as the croak of a frog; they were trying to get a bullfrog to read a doctoral thesis on the use of semiotic elements in Shakespeare’s comedies, in the original Klingon, if you follow. The other problem was that they communicate insanely fast. So, to use another analogy, it was like trying to stream hi-def video through a 300 baud modem. 

“But the biggest problem - one that they’re still having - is the whole hive-mind thing. For some reason, they could detect my mind, but no one else’s. And even  _ that  _ they couldn’t do until they were in the solar system. They’re capable of detecting sentient thoughts - of their kind - across light years. That was the reason for the screwup. They didn’t know there was intelligent life here until they arrived - months after the plague - and even then, they could only detect  _ me _ . 

“And since I’m an individual, not a single neuron in a larger mind, they had no idea what to do with me. Particularly when they realized that I was one of hundreds of thousands of members of the same species, and they couldn’t detect  _ their _ thoughts at all, much less any connection to me.

“Like I said, they think and communicate incredibly fast. It took them like the equivalent of twenty years to even glean a hint of the truth, and another twenty to figure out what to do about it. From their perspective, it took about 50 years for their plan to create a duplicate mind to communicate with me to come to fruition at about 2 o’clock this afternoon. The moment they managed to communicate what was actually happening, they started their descent and told me where to wait.

“I think the coincidence that I had an identical twin threw a wrench in the gears. If I hadn’t had an Andy in my life, or if he hadn’t died, it would have saved me a lot of confusion. And them - me having a psychic twin is close enough in concept to a hive-mind that they wound up going down a blind alley themselves. They couldn’t figure out why they were sending me signals but getting the wrong results. Because everything was filtered through this reflection of me, it couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

“Anyway, that’s my part of the story. Now here’s what happened:

“It turns out that one of the conspiracy theories that floated around at the beginning of all this was actually correct. The aliens - let’s call them the Mind; they don’t call themselves a name a human being could possibly pronounce - had sent an enormous cloud of organic agents to our solar system. As planned, our planet passed through the cloud, and the changes to our planet should have begun. I’ll call what they were planning ‘terraforming,’ since that’s a term we already have, and the Mind’s homeworld doesn’t seem to have a name to put in front of ‘forming.’ And even if it did, you know, pronunciation.

“Everything after the biomatter hit the earth was a complete shitshow. They thought the Earth was a lifeless rock, because they couldn’t detect the trillions of independent minds - sentient or otherwise - that inhabited it. They can’t conceive of such a thing, and it caught them completely off guard. I gotta say, as a side note, that given how smart they are - and their raw intelligence positively dwarfs ours - it seems like a real failure of imagination.

“So at first, rather than initiate bottom-up terraforming, starting with simple organic molecules, the biological agents hit unexpected, overwhelming resistance. We actually passed through the cloud in the 1950s, and it took the bioagents until five years ago to adapt enough to start having an effect on anything. Unfortunately, the results were, well, everything we’ve been through since then. 

“And, they wound up working from the opposite direction than intended - top down. They infected the systems of every organism more advanced than a tree shrew. And the horrible way the infection killed its victims - that was not intentional; it was just a random side effect. The bioagent wasn’t designed to attack anything more evolved than a microbe in the first place, and the Mind had no control - or even knowledge of - how it adapted to the environment it found itself in.

As for the bugs, they’re actually another side effect. One of the things that happened as designed - though a lot sooner than planned - was that the bioagent would edit the genetic structure of a lower, non-sentient indigenous life form to create hybrid organisms to do higher-level terraforming. They found some species of centipede and gave its DNA a complete makeover, resulting in those bugs we all know and love.

“ _ They’re _ a hive-intelligence, too. At first, I thought each individual brain bug was incredibly intelligent - maybe smarter than a human being. But their brainpower is - was - spread out across hundreds of thousands of bugs. Exactly how they’re linked, I have no idea, as I officially no longer believe in psychic powers.

“Now, I know what you’re wondering. Why the walkers? What possible function could they have if not the traditional walking dead agenda? Well, basically, it was the bugs trying to adapt - first by taking over what they thought were individual nodes in the human hive, to allow them to communicate with us directly. Then, when that didn’t work, they attempted to mimic our behavior, on - I think - the logic that maybe we were an incredibly primitive hive mind that didn’t have direct brain-to-brain connection. That we communicated by physical motion or something.

“It was a pretty desperate move, but they were all out of ideas, and they committed to it. I think they probably would have given up in a few more years.

“Anyway, all of this happened while the aliens were in transit. They’re not from incredibly far away by outer space standards - I don’t know where exactly, but it’s within 50 light-years, because they don’t have faster than light travel, but close, and they were traveling for a little over a century, accelerating halfway and slowing down the other half. 

“They sent the bio-cloud through an artificial wormhole, but they can’t create one massive enough to pass through themselves, so they had to go the long way round. They expected to find a habitable planet when they got here. Man, were they surprised.

“Once they were within about a light-year, they detected me - as far as I know, I’ve got the only human mind they can detect. I have no idea why. I can’t have been the only one back when there were eight billion people on the planet, but there probably weren’t many. If Andy had lived, he might have been one of them - assuming it’s a genetic trait. Maybe he was, and that was why we were quote-unquote psychic. Maybe we actually did detect each other’s thoughts on some very rudimentary level. I’ll never know.”

Ollie pauses again. The loss of Andy still leaves him reeling, probably more so now that it’s happened twice from his perspective.

Honestly, I’m glad he’s taking a moment. He’s just unloaded an insane amount of information, all of it mind-boggling. We’re all going to be assimilating it for... well, I’m guessing the rest of our lives.

He continues “I think I’ve covered all the biggest questions, at least superficially. I plan to spend the next few months with our resident scientists, and others around the world, unpacking everything I’ve learned, and anything new the aliens tell me.

“Those are all questions about what’s happened so far. But there’s also the matter of what’s  _ going _ to happen.

“Earlier, I gave you a very brief explanation. Now I can elaborate.

“I told you that they get the land and we get the sea. And that to make that work, we’ll be fulfilling Miriam and Anais’ vision of a giant floating city.

“Here’s how it’s going to go down...”


	6. Chapter 6

LOUISE

“Even with self-replicating robots doing the majority of the work, we were looking at 25 or 30 years to complete the city - maybe 5 or 6 before enough was done that the first residents could move in. But toss in a little alien technology, and boom, it’ll be done in a year, and we can start moving people in in two months. Incredible.”

Miriam is palpably boggling at the projections she’s reading from Ollie, who has been typing for hours, in a fugue state, the Mind feeding him information. He doesn’t understand much of it, most likely, but if spoken language is a sticking point between our species and theirs, the languages of math and science are universal.

Miriam continues. “They’re going to provide the bots and raw materials - they have something even more advanced than Anais’ polymer to work with, though they made a point of mentioning how impressed they were with her work.”

“Yeah,” says Anais, a little put out, but amused, “the way a computer engineer would be impressed by a monkey that built an abacus. They’re stunned that I came up with it, but it doesn’t exactly run at 3.1 gigahertz.”

“Anni,” says Miriam, “you impressed an alien intelligence thousands of years more advanced than us. Take a compliment, already.”

We’re sitting in the restaurant, in Booth 3 - the one where Sidecar was born; crap, I just made myself sad, as much for Gene as for the poor little kid - Rudy and me on one side, Miriam and Anais on the other, staring at their laptop screen. Ollie is elsewhere - I’m not sure exactly where; somewhere quiet, with good reception, I assume.

It’s been a week since First Contact, and Ollie is finally rested up enough from three straight, nearly sleepless days of having his brain picked by experts and laymen alike to dip his - and our - toes into the waters of the floating city-building process.

“Their bots aren’t going to be anything really recognizable to us as robots,” says Anais, “Unless you count the liquid metal robot from Terminator 2 - except that they  _ stay  _ amorphous.” She pauses as a new wodge of text appears on the screen. 

Both she and Miriam exclaim “Whoa!”

Miriam explains. “They’re already working on the underwater framework. It’s going to be simpler than our design because the plan was to use the temperature difference between the water a mile down and the surface water to generate power. But the material they’re using to build the main structure doubles as a solar collector - needless to say, vastly more efficient than anything we’ve got. The entire city will be a giant solar cell. Power will not be an issue.”

“Basically,” says Anais, “they’re following our architectural plans and layout and executing them with their own insanely advanced technology. I had plans for an enormous water desalination and purification plant, and they’re replacing it with something the size of this room that will work for centuries without maintenance.” 

“A large percentage of the city’s footprint,” says Miriam, “will still be dedicated to growing food, but they’re giving us a kind of... ‘food engine’ is the best description I can come up with. It’s a big cube, about the size of the Wharf Arts Center, that contains this... mechanism for generating soy-based proteins, from the genetic level on up. It’s insanely efficient - it could feed the entire city at full capacity by itself. Un-fucking-believable.”

“So,” says Rudy, “unlimited clean water, energy, and food, generated automatically by alien technology. A post-scarcity society. Utopia.”

“Yep,” says Miriam.

“I don’t like it,” says Rudy.

“Seriously?” I say.

“Seriously. What kind of species will we become without challenges? All our needs provided for, and technological advances we might have made eventually already surpassed by the Mind thousands of years ago, so why bother. We’ll turn into those people in Wall-E.”

“Or,” says Miriam, “The Eloi from the Time Machine.”

“Exactly.”

“Look,” says Anais, “just because our needs are provided for, it doesn’t mean our minds will start to atrophy. If anything, it will give people the time and resources to learn and to create. We have a civilization to rebuild, under conditions - however favorable on a material level - that our species has never faced before.  _ That _ will be a challenge. One that will keep us and our descendants busy for centuries.”

“Right, I say. “Relax, Rude. Besides, after everything that’s happened, we kinda deserve a break, don’t we?”

“I don’t know,” says Rudy. “This kind of thing never ends well.”

I grab his face with both hands. “Rudy. Darling. This kind of thing has never happened. Except in science fiction written by people who had nothing in real life to base it on. Fiction, Rudy.”

“Oh, right,” he chuckles, a little embarrassed. “Right. Fiction.”

“And in all of that science fiction,” says Miriam, “the situations and events were generally metaphors or allegories based on human behavior and history. We’re dealing with a completely alien intelligence. They don’t even have the same  _ emotions _ as us. They’re not going to treat us the way we’ve historically treated each other. I mean, they might do something else that sucks; but for the moment, they’re going to a lot of trouble to help us survive.’

“Yeah,” I say, “so unclench your cute little butt and trust hope for a change.”

“Okay, Lou, why not. I, for one, welcome our new alien overl-- oof!” I punch him (gently) in the gut. I swear, if I hear that Simpsons quote one more time...

“So,” says Rudy, a little hoarse, “is Susmita monitoring all this as well?”

“Maybe,” says Anais. “But she’s busy creating a ‘guided tour’ CGI animation of the City from our wireframe models. I can’t wait to see it.”

“She can do that, too?” I say. “I’m impressed.”

“Well, it’s more like she’s managing the AI that’s doing the complicated stuff. But she has a good eye. It’s going to be beautiful,” says Miriam. “She said she’s going to have the exterior completely rendered today by late afternoon. The interior is way more complex, and it’s going to take more like a week to render, particularly with all the windows - the public spaces will be flooded with light, with spectacular views.”

Rudy has a question, and a good one. I never thought about this. “What about the furniture and stuff. Will the bots be building those, too? Will we be bringing in existing items like that from our homes or wherever? How’s that going to work?”

Anais lights up. “Oooh, that part is really cool. The residential suites will have standardized furniture, like a hotel, and it’s going to be based on specifications we give them, which they’ll program into swarms of nano-bots that will construct them in place from thin fucking air! And water, and a few other things. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but they have matter transmutation, in a limited way. They can transmute several types of matter into just one other type. But a really useful one. 

“Depending on how they... process it? ...it can mimic steel, aluminum, glass, wood, fabric, foam - like the mattress and pillow kind - and a few other materials, but they’ll actually all be built from this one super-complex molecule. In fact, the alloy they’re using for the overall structure of the city is a mixture of that material and some other one I can’t identify. It’s like they solved the Grand Unification Theory of making shit. I have the vague impression that they take the raw element, whatever it is, and attenuate it at the quantum level to produce materials with different properties.

“Freaky,” says Rudy.

I don’t even have a response. I’m smart, but I’m not science smart. I can barely follow what Anais is saying. Nanobots? Matter transmutation? Quantum mattresses?

I’ve got to change the subject - attenuate it at the quantum level, if you will. “So, um, stepping away from the Twilight Zone for a minute, where exactly is this city going to be? I know it’s going to be way north, but are we talking Arctic Circle or what?”

“It’s being built about 250 kilometers due west of San Francisco,” says Miriam, “but over the next 30 years or so, as the planet heats up, it will move very slowly north until it reaches the Gulf of Alaska. Which by the 2060s will be positively balmy.”

“Wait,” says Rudy. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to just build it in the Gulf of Alaska in the first place?”

“Well, yeah, but their robots can’t work at peak efficiency in the cold that far north, especially this time of year. But mostly I think it’s just a preference of theirs. The Mind does not like the cold - I mean, obviously; they’re going to raise the average temperature of the planet by 10 degrees celsius by the time they’re done in about 50 years - aided by the running start we’ve given them, of course.”

At that, there’s a long moment of silence. We’re none of us proud of what our race has done to the planet. It’s a disgrace, honestly. Hell, maybe the Mind will treat her better than we did. The thought of them altering the biosphere for their own purposes fills me with revulsion - I actually experience a wave of nausea contemplating it. But really, will it be any worse than the results of our own irresponsibility?

I’m not the religious type - not many people are anymore - but I say an actual prayer, to whoever might be listening, for forgiveness. I know I’m not personally responsible for the actions of the oil industry and the coal industry and the other powers far greater than myself who knowingly laid waste to our precious planet; but I pray on behalf of us all - guilty, complicit, complacent, or bystander. 

If religion returns to our species - and I hope it doesn’t - the despoiling of Mother Earth will be our Original Sin; the Mind, both our savior and our punishment. I can imagine the plague, the bugs, the walkers, all transformed in the new Bible into phenomena of mythological proportions - grand, magical, evil or righteous, and ineffable. Real events transformed into mysticism and outright lies.

God help us. Maybe I should start writing that Bible myself - make sure there are no victimless sins and stuff.

Of course, that’s why we’re doing this - to create an accurate account of the rebirth of the near-death experience of the human race and its aftermath. Better this than a new mythology.

  
  


TINA

On our 70” screen, the “camera” speeds over the surface of the Pacific at great velocity. Occasionally, a group of dolphins rides in our invisible wake but is quickly overtaken. A shape we know to be the City appears on the horizon, first a line, then a bulge, now looming large yet still distant. The breathtaking scale is becoming evident. We face a blue-gray wall, hundreds - no, a thousand feet high... no, twice, three times that. 

By the time we’re close enough to make out individual windows and other fine details, no curve is even discernable. And just at that moment, the camera swoops up and up and we skim the wall so closely and vividly that our stomachs drop and we flinch, anticipating impact. But, of course, none occurs. 

Susmita - with a little help from Miriam’s advanced AI - has outdone herself.

We careen up a wall gently sloping up from the sea - I know from seeing parts of the original wireframes that we’re careening up the side of a structure the approximate shape of a dog bowl - or half of one - over ten miles in diameter.

As we reach the apex, the camera swoops down sharply and for a moment, our eyes tell us we’re in freefall, and our bodies agree. Now we see a surface, at sea level, extending out for miles, covered with multi-colored pastel squares - farmland; rich, green expanses - parks and forests; and futuristic buildings. We speed across it for what is probably three or four miles, then the camera turns sharply and the population center of the city - the kilometer-high metallic half bowl - comes into full view.

  
  
  


The camera’s movement slows and we drift lazily toward one end of the half-circle. As we travel in a slow arc across the city structure - about two-thirds of the way up and a few hundred feet from its blue-gray surface, we glimpse tantalizing details. Sunlight through enormous windows illuminates great halls - auditoriums, sports arenas, gracious public spaces with fountains and sculptures; one space, an art gallery, clearly contains the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, and The Thinker. Through smaller portals, living and bedroom furniture are briefly visible.

Susmita clearly had a chance to complete some of the interior modeling in addition to the exteriors.

Finally, the camera alights at ground- well, sea-level, at a grand entrance, all-glass, perhaps ten stories high. Our point of view rotates so we can see the hundred-foot wide boardwalk that describes an arc along the entire inside wall of the structure. Between the boardwalk and the flat expanse of farmland and forests is about half a mile of ocean water. Boats - ranging from rowboats to yachts - line much of the outer edge of the boardwalk.

Facing inside again, we see, though the hundred-foot high wall of glass, an enormous sculpture - no, a monument - to mankind. A hundred abstracted 10-foot high human figures climb a great, steep hill, all reaching for the sky.

OK, that gets me. As the video fades out, I find that my cheeks are wet, and I’m not alone. Everyone gathered here - all of the family and friends I gathered in the restaurant two weeks ago to say a premature goodbye - is gobsmacked by the spectacle we’ve just seen. But that monument... Did Susmita design it? Is it an existing sculpture somewhere? It reminds me of some of the more powerful Holocaust memorials I’ve seen. Maybe that’s the source.

I bookmark that thought and allow exhilaration to sweep over me. We’re going to live  _ there _ ? We’re graduating from the Zombie Apocalypse to Starfleet Academy? This is going to be so cool.

God, Darryl would have loved it. And Henry Haber. And a dozen other sci-fi nerds I can think of, all gone. Statistics. We all think of ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, and they did too. But they got killed partway through. They didn’t live to see the cool part. 

It’s not fair. They were all worthy protagonists. What makes me, or anyone here, or anyone still standing, so special? 

Survivor’s guilt? I’ve got a cubic Jesus-load (or 4.78 fuck-tons, for those of you who haven’t yet adjusted to the metric system). We all do, on a scale that no one who lived and died before 2024 could possibly have experienced. Survivor’s guilt times 8 billion. 

Well, maybe that’s unfair. I didn’t know all eight billion people who died, just a few. 

When I think about survivor’s guilt, I almost always think of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, who survived Auschwitz only to learn that his wife and both daughters had perished at Bergen Belsen. He was hardly alone in this type of experience, but of course, I know his story because like so many millions of others, I read her diary in school - which is often my source of strength when I need to share something here that feels too personal or intimate. Anne didn’t know her diary would be read, but sometimes just getting something down on paper is an act of bravery.

Could I possibly be experiencing more guilt than those who survived the Holocaust when most of their families didn’t? When so many had died so horribly, and they hadn’t. Of  _ course _ it wasn’t their fault. Of  _ course  _ there was nothing they could possibly have done to stop it, any more than I could have stopped the plague through sheer willpower, or even by trading my life for a friend or relative. Most things in life, particularly nightmares on that scale, are beyond our control.

And yet, always, there is the question, asked by victims and survivors alike: why me. Why was I chosen for this fate and not someone else? What did I do to deserve this?

But there is no answer. It’s almost always random chance, good or bad luck. By sheer random happenstance, I was immune to the alien bioweapon. By chance, no Nazi decided at any point that Otto Frank Must Die, and the war ended before he succumbed to starvation or illness.

It’s not fair, and despite what MLK said, the arc of history does not bend toward justice. The universe doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t care. It didn’t have it in for Henry Haber any more than it held me in some sort of favor. 

Sure, the Nazis were pure, distilled evil while the Mind just fucked up. Two completely different things.

Ultimately, in the Big Picture, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened. 

I’m sorry you didn’t get to see it Darryl, Henry. But I promise, when I’m living there, not a day will go by when I look out on our glorious city that I don’t think of you, and so many others, and how much you would have loved the view.


	7. Posterity

TINA

How do you say goodbye to everything you’ve ever known? 

I feel like a dying woman who believes in heaven. I know I’m going to a beautiful place, but I’m sad and frightened to leave this world behind. Sure, I’ll be with loved ones and friends on the other side. I’m actually looking forward to it. But to leave Seymour’s Bay, knowing I can never return? 

Worse, my dear already departed will not be waiting for me. There will be no reunion with Jimmy Junior, or Daryl, or Aunt Gayle, or anyone. I’ll never be able to tell them that I love them, that they meant everything to me. That I know they suffered the agonies of the damned, and that I’d have given anything to make that not so. 

Sure, I had my moment with Jimmy Junior. But he was near death after a week of unimaginable pain. Dehydrated, surely delirious. Did he even recognize me? And if he did, would it really have meant anything to him at that point? Could he have had the slightest thought beyond a constant prayer for death? 

Darryl. Henry Haber. Even Tammy. Shallow, hateful Tammy. I should have been there, holding their hands, comforting them as they passed from this world. I could have been there for a hundred people - friends, acquaintances, even strangers. But I was too wrapped up in my own fear and grief. 

We all were. Well, except for Courtney and her cleanup crew; and Gene, who took it upon himself to put over fifty people out of their misery, or to prevent it. When I think of what it took to help usher Sidecar out of this world, I’m humbled; I’m proud beyond words of my dear brother, and I want to cry my eyes out. I sometimes do. 

There were others, of course, mostly people I didn’t know, who took on the burden of delivering dozens of euthanizing gunshots or helping terrified, despairing people swallow enough pills to end it all.

I couldn’t have done it. That’s my failure as a human being. I should have done more. Or maybe I couldn’t have. It took everything I had just to maintain the will to live. Maybe that’s enough. I don’t know. Ask someone else - preferably someone who loves me.

  
  


GENE

The alien transport ship is a lot less alien looking than their spaceship. If anything, it looks like an ultramodern yacht, like one of those sleek, $50 million jobs once favored by high-tech CEOs, only about three times the size. 

Well, there _is_ the fact that it’s floating five feet above the surface of the water. 

It certainly feels like we’re boarding a cruise ship as we and most of our fellow townsfolk traverse the gangplank from the Wharf to the ship carrying backpacks, purses or small “carry-on” sized suitcases. The bulk of our possessions were collected yesterday and will be waiting for us when we arrive. 

In an hour. Four thousand miles. Through the atmosphere. So, yeah, _that’s_ pretty science-fictiony.

A lot of us are crying, knowing not only that we’re leaving forever, but that the town we leave behind will be completely replaced by a more alien-friendly environment.

It’s hard to visualize, partly because we don’t know what the aliens - the many millions of organisms that make up the Mind - look like. Ollie tells us they’re not insectoid like the bugs they sent, but that’s all he’d been able to glean the last time I spoke with him, other than the fact that they’re all on board that one spacecraft we saw. Apparently, the vast majority of the approximately 200 million organisms are stored in the form of clumps of cells full of genetic information - if they were human, we’d call them zygotes.

When it’s time, the zygotes will be fully incubated and released fully grown into their new world. They won’t need the kind of nurturing and education a human child would need, as they’ll be connected to the Mind, which contains the sum of their entire species’ knowledge, the moment they awaken.

It’s pretty cool, actually. Once we get some distance from the trauma we’ve been through and are going through right now, I think it will be fascinating to learn more about the Mind. 

In the meantime, I find that I’m not so tearful as we board the transport. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in a haze of grief for the past few weeks, as I’ve prepared to leave what’s left of my old life behind forever. But I’ve come through to the other side, I guess, and my mind is free to marvel at the interior of the transport, which is laid out like an auditorium, with enough seating for the approximately 500 humans currently boarding it.

I take a seat between Courtney and Jocelyn, both of whose eyes are bugging out. I check myself and realize that my eyes are comically wide as well, as are those of most of those I see around me. The transport, on the inside, is less a giant yacht than a miniature Sydney Opera house. 

I wonder if there will be in-flight entertainment.

I look around at my friends and family. Directly behind me, Mom and Dad sit together, with their lovers at their sides.

“I love you, Mom,” I say. 

“I love you too, Gene. I love all of you,” she says to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

“We love you too,” reply about 20 people - including a few strangers.

Louise, seated with Rudy directly behind Mom and Dad, leans forward and in an act of uncharacteristic tenderness, strokes Dad’s thinning hair, then puts her hand on his shoulder. “You’re the best, Dad. And the best dad. I love you so much.” 

She kisses his bald spot.

“I’m not crying, _you’re_ crying,” declares Dad, jokingly, betraying a self-awareness he’s been a long time developing. Andrea has really centered him.

Soon “I love yous” wash through the community in a great wave, or rather a ripple, like the wake of a pebble tossed in a lake. They reach the edge of the seating area and double back, and soon we’re all embracing each other and weeping with joy and pride and love and grief and loss and hope and wonder.

By God, we’re going to make it. We got through the worst thing ever, and there’s enough of us left to carry on and propagate the species. We survived. More, we survived with our souls intact. 

It will be very easy, once we’re settled into our glorious new home, to take it all for granted. God knows we deserve to kick back and relax for a while.

I won’t let myself forget, though. I’ll take nothing for granted. Every day is a gift, every moment past with friends and family now gone, a blessing. I know I’m sounding all religious and new-agey all of a sudden, but if not now, when? 

We’re on the brink - no, in the middle of - one of the most important, pivotal moments in human history. By sheer luck of the draw, those of us here have been chosen to take our species forward into an entirely unforeseen future, the vanguards of a new age. Not to get all prophetic, but my people will rise again. And if the individuals around me are any indication, our children will be better than their ancestors. 

Think of it! Humanity sans the constant fight for resources. No war. No hunger. Utopia.

Yeah, I know, we’ll find a way to screw it up. Humanity always does. 

Maybe just not as much, this time.

  
  


LOUISE

Once we’ve all settled down from our spontaneous love explosion - which, history will note, _I_ started - The walls around us disappear. Well, they become transparent, anyway. Now we’re 500 people seated on a platform with Seymour’s Bay and the infinite sea stretched out around us. 360 degrees. There is a collective gasp, followed by murmurs and general “rooba rooba roobas,” then dead silence. 

We’re definitely still inside the vessel - there’s no breeze, no external sounds. But there’s not the slightest visual indication that there’s the hull of an enormous alien ship around us.

I see Ollie stand and head for a raised platform at the front of the ship. Behind him, the Jersey coast stretches to the horizon, to the left (port, I recall, from where I have no idea; maybe a movie), Wonder Wharf, to starboard, glittering blue-green ocean and King’s Head Island. 

“Pretty cool, huh?” he says. “I told the aliens that humans enjoy having a nice view when we travel. They couldn’t relate, but we’ve been getting better at communicating lately, and they at least understood.

“I know some of you are nervous flyers, or get motion sickness, but don’t worry. This thing has inertial dampers. It won’t even feel like we’re moving - though with the entire continent passing under you in less than an hour, your brain will get the idea. 

“We’re going to be flying pretty low - less than two thousand feet up - so you’ll have one hell of a view. I know it will be difficult to watch, in a way, knowing that it will all be gone - or at least altered into something alien and unrecognizable. Bawl if you must - I plan to cry my eyes out over the Rockies - but take the opportunity to appreciate our magnificent continent, and our works upon it, grand and awful, one last time. Give it, and us, a round of applause at the end. 

“If it helps, I’ve gotten a sense of what the world is going to look like as the Mind ‘terraforms’ it, and it’s actually really cool. Beautiful, even. Not exactly the planet from Avatar, but really amazing. They’re changing the earth, but not laying waste to it. There’s an understandable tendency to think of them as giant versions of the bugs, but they’re not like that at all. I have no idea what they look like, but I have the very strong impression that they’re... lithe. Almost insubstantial. I think... I think we’ll find them weirdly beautiful, once we get over our resentment. 

“Please remember that - the Mind is not the bugs. It’s a complex and beautiful thing, and as I’ve said many times but feel I should repeat, they’re not our enemies. They’re sorry for what they did - or as close to it as their completely alien emotions can come. They’re going to take what they need, but they’re also going to take care of us.”

I’m stunned by the young man I see on the stage. Ollie and his twin were utterly absurd children, and kind of dumb, honestly. But the man speaking to us now, I’d follow to hell and back. He is brilliant, articulate, and perceptive, and his poise is almost otherworldly (a thought I’m filing away for further consideration). I swear, just in this moment, I want to have his baby. I wonder if Rudy will mind...

“There’s so much to say. I could go on for hours. Just...” Ollie is speechless for a moment. I can see the enormity of it all hitting him, and sense that somehow, everyone else can sense it too. We all share a brief Reality Check Moment. Actually, I don’t know how long we’re lost in it, but after some indeterminate time, Ollie brings us out of it.

“Just know that we have a future. That there’s hope. That there are challenges ahead, and we can meet them.

“Also, it’s going to be really, really cool.”

“So now, relax and enjoy a trip that will make the Concorde look like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

Ollie returns to his seat, and after a few seconds, the transport lifts straight up. And up and up. Then when we’re about 2000 feet up, we go into hyperdrive. 

  
  


COURTNEY

We’re on a (seemingly) open-air platform just below cloud-level going 4000 miles an hour, west across New Jersey. There’s no sense of motion or acceleration, but I still feel like I’m being pushed back into my seat. My brain can’t handle the conflicting information, so it’s filling in the details.

In less than a minute, I can see the Philadelphia skyline. In less than another minute, the beautiful city is receding behind us. Now we’re speeding across beautiful, green suburbs, then farmland, then scarred, strip-mined mountains and industrial blight. Lather rinse repeat until we pass over Pittsburgh, which I once visited to see my cousin who was studying Poli-sci at Carnegie-Mellon. She was the first of my family members to die. I file that thought away to be sad about later.

Now Pittsburgh and (with any luck) that awful memory are far behind me as we enter Ohio airspace. 

  
  


JOE

Oy meyn fucking gott. 

It’s not that I never imagined traveling in an alien ship. Who hasn’t, really. But this whole invisible hull thing... I’m sitting perfectly still, but my brain is smooshed against the back of my skull. Figuratively. Physically, it’s sitting there as comfortable as ever, thinking away. Mostly it’s thinking “holy shit!” and “what the fuck?!” and “Jesus fucking Christ.” 

Occasionally, it thinks “hello, Columbus, goodbye, Colo-- hello Indianapolis, goodbye...”

Look, I’ve been through a lot. I’ve seen some shit. But this is just bananas. Sorry if that’s a crude way of putting it, posterity. They should’ve sent a poet.

Maybe it’s weird, but at the moment, when I’m not light-headed with astonishment, I’m feeling lonely. I should have a hand to hold right now. Louise is seated in front of me, but naturally, she’s leaning on Rudy, fingers intertwined with his. Good, they should be happy. They should have each other right now. 

But I’m facing this brave new world all alone. I mean, I have a community, and I’m grateful. But sweet Jesus, I need a lover - no, a partner - right now.

Meh. I’ll live, right? This is exhilarating, no question. Beyond my feeble ability to put into words. I should be overjoyed. And I am, really. There’s just this sour aftertaste to it. 

Damn. I should get over myself. I’m alive. After everything that’s happened, I’m alive and healthy - minus an extremity but plus a cool robotic left hand. Eight billion people are dead, and I’m not one of them. I should be continually banjaxed by the sheer improbability of my mere existence. I should...

A tiny hand reaches back to touch mine (I’ve been unconsciously gripping the seat in front of me). “Hey. Cheer up, Joe,’ says Louise. “I can feel you pouting from here.”

Really? 

“I just - well, you know my deal. Sorry to be a buzzkill.”

“You’re not,” she says. She turns to face me. I notice that her bunny ears are folded straight back, like they’re being blown back in the nonexistent wind. “I love you, Joe. If you can deal with not being my primary, you can still be my life partner. One of them.”

I should think about this. It’s not a decision to be made when I’m feeling lonely. Or traveling at hypersonic speeds. “You don’t mind that we’re not exactly age-appropriate? Think about it - when you’re 40 I’ll be 65.”

“Ageist,” she chides me.

Gift horse, I tell myself. Beautiful little gift bunny-horse. What’s my problem?

“Rudy,” I ask as we flash by Witchita, “you cool with this?”

He laughs. “Jeez, Joe, I’ve told you I'm down with this a dozen times. Anyone who loves Louise is OK with me. Marry us, already.”

I can make this work. I’ve been in triads a few times before. It’s fun, usually. When it goes bad, it goes very bad very fast; but none of my past triad relationships were as close or deep as mine with Louise and Rudy. It just makes sense.

“Well...okay, but you better put a ring on it” I say, displaying my robotic ring finger.

“Anais can probably make you a new hand with a ring built into it.”

“Now _that’s_ commitment,” I say. I kiss her tenderly. Denver passes beneath us in a blur. It’s raining in torrents, but the droplets mysteriously disappear before they can splat against the invisible hull at Mach 6.

So, to review: I just agreed to enter into a group marriage with a 19-year-old girl in a bunny-ear hat, and her husband, while traveling at 4000 mph toward a floating city built by aliens for the remainder of the human race in the wake of two Zombie Apocalypses, and I’ll be wearing my wedding ring on my robotic left hand.

Oh, when will my life get interesting?

  
  


JOCELYN

We just passed San Francisco in the blink of an eye.

Goodbye, North America. Goodbye New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Kansas City and Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Goodbye Mississippi River and the Appalachians and the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon.

Goodbye Broadway, goodbye Silicon Valley, goodbye Nashville.

Goodbye Seymour’s Bay.

I wish I’d been awake, aware, more of my life. That I’d noticed more of the world around me before civilization died. Above all, I wish it hadn’t taken the act of putting a bullet through my best friend’s skull to wake me up.

This ship; our one-hour transcontinental trip, the continent laid out before us in all of its spectacular, poignant glory; the magnificent city on the sea we’ll be arriving at in a little over five minutes. Tammy wouldn’t have appreciated any of it. 

I pity her. I don’t want to, because pity is a form of contempt. But I do. She was awful. If she’d lived, she’d have been the same useless person she was before. 

And if I hadn’t had to kill her, who knows what I’d be now. 

So thank you, Tammy. You died that I might live. I promise, I’ll never forg--

There it is. 

  
  


SUSMITA

Even 20 percent complete, the City is far grander than I could have imagined. The size of it! Nearly the height of the Burj Khalifa, and the completed section, the center of the arc of the main structure, is wider than that, and at the base, it’s almost a kilometer from outer edge to inner. 

As we approach, the ship slows to a stately cruising speed of maybe 50 mph. This was probably OIlie’s idea -- in fact, we’re approaching the structure on the exact trajectory I used in my simulation.

When we’re close enough to make out fine details, I notice that the uncompleted sections are crawling with amorphous gray masses - the alien construction robots. And I swear that in the partially completed sections open to the air, I can see furniture and decorations fading into place - the nanobots at work. 

As Arthur Clarke said: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We pass over the completed section in an arc, dropping down to about 100 feet above sea level. As in my simulation, we pass over a the farmland/forest area, which is just beginning to take form as a floating metallic grid. Then we turn and approach the main structure, which, even from a mile away, looms above us. The sky is clear, but on overcast days, as much as the top 300 feet could be shrouded in clouds.

By the time we approach the main entrance and turn to the right so that the ship’s starboard side is less than 20 feet from the great boardwalk, the huge vessel is utterly dwarfed by its surroundings. A fruit fly on Hoover Dam.

We soak it all in for a moment, then, as Ollie suggested, burst into applause. In fact, we give the ship, the journey, and the city a standing ovation. A silly response perhaps, but a cathartic one. It’s either that or pass dead out from the overwhelming enormity of the moment.

We’re here.

We survived. 

We’re safe. 

We’re home. 

  
  


TINA

There’s more to tell. Much more. I could go on and on about the City - which, six months after our arrival, we’re still struggling to name; the debate has been epic. I could tell you about the palisades and promenades and museums and auditoriums and libraries and fountains and farms and forests and the lakes and ponds and swimming pools and walking paths; about the high-speed “bullet train” transport from section to section; about the monuments to the dead past and the limitless future.

But I want to leave you with this. 

Large sections of both the main structure and the sea-level expanse are dedicated to recreations of portions of great cities. There’s about 200 acres of Venice in the interior of the dizzying third level of the city, next to a bit of Paris (including, of course, a full-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower. There are bits of Reykjavík, London, Barcelona, Bejing, Tokyo... and many others. 

And along the edge of the flat expanse, sections of New Orleans, Miami, Honolulu...

And, per Ollie’s special request to the Mind, there is a precise replica of the Old Town section of Seymour’s Bay, complete with Wonder Wharf.

I don’t live there full time, but I do spend plenty of time there. How can I not? Particularly when Dad lives there, right above Bob’s Burgers, where, using the incredibly versatile Food Engine soy protein, he cooks up the best burgers ever.

If you’re ever in town, Posterity, be sure to try the Burger of the Day.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
